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THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 





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THE LAND OF 
DEEPENING SHADOW 

GERMANY-AT-WAR 



BY 

D. THOMAS CURTIN 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



13 5 1 5" 



COPYEIGHT, 1917, 
BY GEORGE H. DOEAN COMPANY 



MAY -3 1917 



PEINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMEKICA 



©CI,A4o0579 



TO 

LORD NORTHCLIFFE 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 



I Getting In 
II When Skies Were Blue 



III The Crime Against the Children 30 



IV Pulpits of Hate 

V Puppet Professors 

VI The Lie on the Film . 

VII The Idea Factory 

VIII Correspondents in Shackles 

IX Anton Lang of Oberammergau 

X Submarine Motives 

XI The Eagle and the Vulture 

XII In the Grip of the Fleet . 

XIII A Land of Substitutes 

XIV The Gagging of Liebknecht 
XV Preventive Arrest 

XVI Police Eule in Bohemia 

XVII Spies and Semi-Spies . 

XVIII The Iron Hand in Alsace-Lor 

RAINE .... 

XIX The Woman in the Shadow . 
7 



11 

20 



39 

48 

57 

79 

91 

103 

112 

118 

136 

156 

164 

176 

194 

202 

215 
225 



8 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XX The War Slaves of Essen . . 241 

XXI Tommy in Germany . . .250 

XXII How THE Prussian Guard Came 

Home From the Somme . 265 

XXIII How Germany Denies . . 276 

XXIV Germany's Human Eesources . 285 
XXV Berlin's East-End . . .292 

XXVI In the Deepening Shadow . . 300 

XXVII Across the ]!^orth Sea . . 317 

XXVIII The Little Ships . . .332 



THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 



THE LAND OF 
DEEPENING SHADOW 

CHAPTER I 

GETTING IN 

EARi>Y in l!^ovember, 1915, I sailed from New York 
to Rotterdam. 

I spent nearly a month in Holland completing my 
preparations, and at length one grey winter morning 
I took the step that I dreaded. I had left Germany 
six months before with a feeling that to enter it again 
and get safely out was hopeless, foolish, dangerous, 
impossible. But at any rate I was going to try. 

At Zevenaar, while the Dutch customs officials were 
examining my baggage, I patronised the youth selling 
apple cakes and coffee, for after several months' 
absence from Germany my imagination had been 
kindled to contemplate living uncomfortably on short 
rations for some time as the least of my troubles. 
Furthermore, the editorial opinion vouchsafed in the 
Dutch newspaper which I had bought at Arnhem was 
that Austria's reply to the "Ancona" Note made a 
break with America almost a certainty. Consequently 
as the train rolled over the few remaining miles to the 
frontier I crammed down my apple cakes, resolved to 
face the unknown on a full stomach. 

II 



1 2 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

The wheels ground under the brakes, I pulled down 
the window with a bang and looked out no longer upon 
the soft rolled military cap of Holland but upon the 
business-like spiked helmet of Germany. I steeled my- 
self. There was no backing out now. I had crossed 
the German frontier. 

The few passengers filed into the customs room, where 
a corps of skilled mechanics prised open the contents of 
bags and trunks. Each man was an expert in his 
profession. A hand plunged into one of my bags and 
emerged with several bars of chocolate, the wrappers of 
which were shorn off before the chocolate was well out 
of the bag. A bottle of liniment, the brand that made 
us forget our sprains and bruises in college days, was 
brought to light, and with commendable dexterity the 
innocent label was removed in a twinkling with a spe- 
cially constructed piece of steel. The label had a pic- 
ture of a man with a very extensive moustache — ^the 
man who had made the liniment famous, or vice versa — 
but the trade name and proprietor must go unsung in 
the Fatherland, for the Government has decreed that 
travellers entering Germany may bring only three 
things containing printed matter, viz. : railroad tickets, 
money and passports. 

When the baggage squad had finished its task and 
replaced all unsuspected articles, the bags were sealed 
and sent on to await the owner, whose real troubles 
now began. 

I stepped into a small room where I was asked to 
hand over all printed matter on my person. Two 
reference books necessary for my work were tried and 
found not guilty, after which they were enclosed 



GETTING IN 13 

in a large envelope and sent through the regular 
censor. 

Switched into a third room before I had a chance 
even to bid good-bye to the examiners in the second, 
I found myself standing before a small desk answering 
questions about myself and my business asked tersely 
by an inquisitor who read from a lengthy paper which 
had to be filled in, and behind whom stood three officers 
in uniform. These occasionally interpolated questions 
and always glared into my very heart. When I 
momentarily looked away from their riveted eyes it 
was only to be held transfixed by the scrutinising orbs 
of a sharp, neatly dressed man who had been a passenger 
on the train. He plays the double role of detective- 
interpreter, and he plays it in first-class fashion. 

While the man behind the desk was writing my biog- 
raphy, the detective — or rather the interpreter, as I 
prefer to think of him, because he spoke such perfect 
English — cross-examined me in his own way. As the 
grilling went on I did not know whether to be anxious 
about the future or to glow with pride over the 
profound interest which the land of Goethe and 
Schiller was displaying in my life and literary 
efforts. 

Had I not a letter from Count Bernstorff ? 

I was not thus blessed. 

Did I not have a birth certificate ? Whom did I 
know in Germany ? Where did they live ? On what 
occasions had I visited Germany during my past life ? 
On what fronts had I already seen fighting? What 
languages did I speak, and the degree of proficiency 
in each? 



14 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Many of mj answers to these and similar questions 
were carefully written down by the man at the desk, 
while his companions in the inquisition glared, always 
glared, and the room danced with soldiers passing 
through it. 

At length my passport was folded and returned to 
me, but my credentials and reference books were sealed 
in an envelope. They would be returned to me later, 
I was told. 

I was shunted along into an adjoining small room 
where nimble fingers dexterously ran through my cloth- 
ing to find out if I had overlooked declaring anything. 

Another shunting and I was in a large room. I 
rubbed elbows with more soldiers along the way, but 
nobody spoke. Miraculously 1 came to a halt before 
a huge desk, much as a bar of glowing iron, after glid- 
ing like a living thing along the floor of a rolling mill, 
halts suddenly at the bidding of a distant hand. 

Behind the desk stood men in active service uni- 
forms — men who had undoubtedly faced death for the 
land which I was seeking to enter. They fired further 
questions at me and took down the data on my pass- 
port, after which I wrote my signature for the official 
files. Attacks came hard and fast from the front and 
both flanks, while a silent soldier thumbed through a 
formidable card file, apparently to see if I were a per- 
sona non grata, or worse, in the records. 

I became conscious of a silent power to my left, and 
turning my glance momentarily from the rapid-fire 
questioners at the desk, I looked into a pair of lynx 
eyes flashing up and down my person. Another detec- 
tive, with probably the added role of interpreter, but 



GETTING IN 15 

as I was answering all questions in German he said not 
a word. Yet he looked volumes. 

Through more soldiers to the platform, and then a 
swift and comparatively comfortable journey to Emme- 
rich, accompanied by a soldier who carried my sealed 
envelope, the contents of which were subsequently re- 
turned to me after an examination by the censor. 

At last I was alone ! or rather I thought I was, for 
my innocent stroll about Emmerich was duly observed 
by a man who bore the unmistakable air of his pro- 
fession, and who stepped into my compartment on the 
Cologne train as I sat mopping my brow waiting for it 
to start. He flashed his badge of detective authority, 
asked to see my papers, returned them to me politely, 
and bowed himself out. 

My journey was through the heart of industrial Ger- 
many, a heart which throbs feverishly night and day, 
month in and month out, to drive the Teuton power 
east, west, north, and south. 

Eorests of lofty chimney-stacks in Wesel, Duisburg, 
Kref eld, Essen, Elberf eld and Dlisseldorf belched smoke 
which hazed the landscape far and wide : smoke which 
made cities, villages, lone brick farmhouses, trees, and 
cattle appear blurred and indistinct, and which filtered 
into one's very clothing and into locked travelling bags. 

But there was a strength and virility about every- 
thing, from the vulcanic pounding and crashing in mills 
and arsenals to the sturdy uniformed women who were 
pushing heavy trucks along railroad platforms or pol- 
ishing railings and door knobs on the long lines of cars 
in the train yards. 

Freight trains, military trains and passenger trains 



1 6 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

were speeding over the network of rails without a hitch, 
soldiers and officers were crowding station platforms, 
and if there was any faltering of victory hopes among 
these men — as the atmosphere of the outside world may 
have at that time led one to believe — I utterly failed 
to detect it in their faces. They were either doggedly 
and determinedly moving in the direction of duty, or 
going happily home for a brief holiday respite, as an 
unmistakable brightness of expression, even when their 
faces were drawn from the strain of the trenches, 
clearly showed. 

But it is the humming, beehive activity of these 
Ehenish-Westphalian cities and towns which crowd one 
another for space that impresses the traveller in this 
workshop section of Germany. He knows that the sea 
of smoke, the clirr and crash of countless foundries are 
the impelling force behind Germany's soldier millions, 
whether they are holding far-thrown lines in Russia, or 
smashing through the ISTear East, or desperately coun« 
ter-attacking in the West. 

In harmony with the scene the winter sun sank like 
a molten metal ball behind the smoke-stack forest, to 
set blood-red an hour later beyond the zigzag lines in 
iFrance. 

Maximilian Harden had just been widely reported 
as having said that Germany's great military conquests 
were in no way due to planning in higher circles, but 
are the work of the rank and file — of the Schultzs and 
the Schmidts. I liked to think of this as the train sped 
on at the close of the short winter afternoon, for my 
first business was to call upon a middle-class family 
on behalf of a German-American in 'New York, who 



GETTING IN 17 

wished me to take £100 to his relatives in a small 
Rhenish town. 

Thus mj first evening in Germany found me in a 
dark little town on the Rhine groping my way through 
crooked streets to a home, the threshold of which I 
no sooner crossed than I was made to feel that the arm 
of the police is long and that it stretches out into the 
remotest villages and hamlets. 

The following incident, which was exactly typical 
of what would happen in nineteen German households 
out of twenty, may reveal one small aspect of German 
character to British and American people, who are as 
a rule completely unable to understand German psy- 
chology. 

iVlthough I had come far out of my way to bring 
what was for them a considerable sum of money, as 
well as some portraits of their long-absent relatives in 
the United States and interesting family news, my re- 
ception was as cold as the snow-blown air outside. I 
was not allowed to finish explaining my business when 
I was at first petulantly and then violently and angrily 
interrupted with: — 

"Have you been to the police V 

"No," I said. "I did not think it was necessary 
to go to the police, as I am merely passing through 
here, and am not going to stay." 

The lady of the house replied coldly, "Go to the 
police," and shut the door in my face. 

I mastered my temper by reminding myself that 
whereas such treatment at home would have been suf- 
ficiently insulting to break off further relations, it was 
not intended as such in Germany. 



1 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

It was a long walk for a tired man to the Polizeiamt. 
When I got there I was fortunate in encountering a 
lank, easy-going old fellow who had been comman- 
deered for the job owing to the departure of aU the local 
police for the war. He was clearly more interested in 
trying to find out something of his relations in some re- 
mote village in America, which he said was named after 
them, than in my business. 

I returned to pay the £100 and deliver the photo- 
graphs, and now that I had been officially "policed" was 
received with great cordiality and pressed to spend the 
evening. 

Father, mother, grown-up daughters and brother-in- 
law all assured me that it was not owing to my per- 
sonal appearance that I had been so coldly received, but 
that war is war and law is law and that everything must 
be done as the authorities decree. 

Cigars and cigarettes were showered upon me and 
my glass was never allowed to be empty of Rhine wine. 
Good food was set before me and the stock generously 
replenished whenever necessary. It will be remem- 
bered that I had come unexpectedly and that I was not 
being entertained in a wealthy home, and this at a time 
when the only counter-attack on Germany's success in 
the Balkans was an increased amount of stories that 
she was starving. 

Evidently the Schultzs and the Schmidts were not 
taking all the credit for Germany's position to them- 
selves. They pointed with pride to a picture of the 
Emperor adorning one wall and then smiled with satis- 
faction as they indicated the portrait of von Hinden- 
burg on the wall opposite. One of the daughters wore 



GETTING IN 19 

a huge silver medallion of the same renowned general 
on her neck. After nearly a year and a half of war 
these hard-working Germans were proud of their leaders 
and had absolute faith in them. 

But this family had felt the war. One son had just 
been wounded, they knew not how severely, in France. 
If some unknown English soldier on the Yser had raised 
his rifle just a hairbreadth higher the other son would 
be sleeping in the blood-soaked soil of Elanders instead 
of doing garrison duty in Hanover while recovering 
from a bullet which had passed through his head just 
under the eyes, 



CHAPTER II 



WHEN SKIES WEEE BlLUE 



THEEE was one more passenger, making three, in 
our first-class compartment in the all-day express 
train from Cologne to Berlin after it left Hanover. He 
was a naval officer of about forty-five, clean-cut, alert, 
clearly an intelligent man. His manner was proud, but 
not objectionably so. 

The same might be said of the manner of the major 
who had sat opposite me since the train left Diisseldorf . 
I had been in Germany less than thirty hours and was 
feeling my way carefully, so I made no attempt to en- 
ter into conversation. Just before lunch the jolting of 
the train deposited the major's coat at my feet. I 
picked it up and handed it to him. He received it with 
thanks and a trace of a smile. He was polite, but icily 
so. I was an American, he was a German officer. In 
his way of reasoning my country was unneutrally mak- 
ing ammunition to kill himself and his men. But for 
my country the war would have been over long ago. 
Therefore he hated me, but his training made him po- 
lite in his hate. That is the difference between the 
better class of army and naval officers and diplomats 
and the rest of the Germans. 

When he left the compartment for the dining-car he 
saluted and bowed stiffly. When we met in the narrow 
corridor after our return from lunch, each stepped aside 

20 



WHEN SKIES WERE BLUE 21 

to let the other pass in first. I exchanged with him heel- 
click for heel-click, salute for salute, waist-bow for 
waist-bow, and after-you-my-dear-Alphonse sweep of the 
arm for you-go-first-my-dear-Gaston motion from him. 
The result was that we both started at once, collided, 
backed away arid indulged in all the protestations and 
gymnastics necessary to beg another's pardon in mili- 
tary Germany. At length we entered, erected a screen 
of ice between us, and alternately looked from one an- 
other to the scenery hour after hour. 

The entrance of the naval ofiicer relieved the strain, 
for the two branches of the Kaiser's armed might were 
soon — after the usual gymnastics — engaged in conver- 
sation. They were not men to discuss their business be- 
fore a stranger. Once I caught the word Amerikaner 
uttered in a low voice, but though their looks told that 
they regarded me as an intruder in their country they 
said nothing on that point. 

At Stendal we got the Berlin evening papers, which 
had little of interest except a few lines about the An- 
cona affair between Washington and Vienna. 

"Do you think Austria will grant the American de- 
mands ?" the man in grey asked the man in blue. 

"Austria will do what Germany thinks best. Per- 
sonally, I hope that we take a firm stand. I do not 
believe in letting the United States tell us how to con- 
duct the war. We are quite capable of conducting it 
and completing it in a manner satisfactory to ourselves." 

The man in grey agreed with the man in blue. 

Past the blazing munition works at Spandau, across 
the Havel, through the Tiergarten, running slowly now, 
to the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof. 



22 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

A bewildering swirl of thoughts rushed through my 
head as I stepped out on the platform. More than three 
months ago I had left London for my long, circuitous 
journey to Berlin. I had planned and feared, planned 
and hoped. The German spy system is the most elab- 
orate in the world. Only through a miracle could the 
Wilhelmstrasse be ignorant of the fact that I had trav- 
elled all over Europe during the war for the hated Brit- 
ish Press. I could only hope that the age of miracles 
had not passed. 

The crowd was great, porters were as scarce as they 
used to be plentiful, I was waiting for somebody, so I 
stood still and took note of my surroundings. 

Across the platform was a long train ready to start 
west, and from each window leaned oflScers and soldiers 
bidding good-bye to groups of friends. The train was 
marked Hannover, Koln, Lille. As though I had never 
known it before, I found myself saying, "Lille is in 
Prance, and those men ride there straight from here." 

The train on which I had arrived had pulled out and 
another had taken its place. This was marked Posen, 
Thorn, Insterhurg, Stallupbnen, Alexandrovo, Vilna. 
As I stood on that platform I felt Germany's power in 
a peculiar but convincing way. I had been in Germany, 
in East Prussia, when the Kussians were not only in 
possession of the last four places named, but about to 
threaten the first two. 

'Now the simple printed list of stations on the heavy 
train about to start from the capital of Germany to 
Vilna, deep in Russia, was an awe-inspiring tribute to 
the great military machine of the Patherland. For a 



WHEN SKIES WERE BLUE 23 

moment I believed in von Bethmann-Holweg's talk 
about the "map of Europe." 

I was eager to see how much Berlin had changed, for 
I knew it at various stages of the war, but I cannot 
honestly saj that the changes which I detected later, 
and which I shall deal with in subsequent chapters of 
this book — changes which are absorbingly interesting 
to study on the spot and vitally important in the prog- 
ress and outcome of the war — were very apparent then. 

In the dying days of 1915 I found the people of Ber- 
lin almost as supremely confident of victory, especially 
now since Bulgaria's entrance had made such sweeping 
changes in the Balkans, as they were on that day of 
cloudless blue, the first of August, 1914, when the dense 
mass swayed before the Koyal Palace, to see William 
II. come out upon the balcony to bid his people rise to 
arms. Eyes sparkled, cheeks flushed, the buzz changed 
to cheering, the cheering swelled to a roar. The army 
which had been brought to the highest perfection, the 
army which would sweep Europe — at last the German 
people could see what it would do, would show the world 
what it would do. The anticipation intoxicated them. 

An American friend told me of how he struggled to- 
ward the 8chloss, but in the jam of humanity got only 
as far as the monument of Frederick the Great. There 
a youth threw his hat in the air and cried : "Hoch der 
Krieg, Hoch der Krieg!" (Hurrah for the war). 

That was the spirit that raged like a prairie fire. 

An old man next to him looked him full in the eyes. 
"Der Krieg ist eine ernste 8 ache, Junge!" (War is a 
serious matter, young man), he said and turned away. 



24 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

He was in the crowd, but not of it. His note was dis- 
cordant. They snarled at him and pushed him roughly. 
They gloried in the thought of war. They were certain 
that they were invincible. All that they had been 
taught, all the influences on their lives convinced them 
that nothing could stand before the furor teutonicv^ 
once it was turned loose. 

Delirious days when military bands blared regiment 
after regiment through lines of cheering thousands; 
whole companies deluged with flowers, long military 
trains festooned with blossoms and greenery rolling 
with clock-like regularity from the stations amid thun- 
derous cheers. Sad partings were almost unknown, for, 
of course, no earthly power could withstand the on- 
slaughts of the Kaiser's troops. God was with them — 
even their belts and helmets showed that. So, "Good- 
bye for six weeks !" 

The 2nd of September is Sedan Day, and in 1914 it 
was celebrated as never before. A great parade was 
scheduled, a parade which would show German prowess. 
Though I arrived in "Unter den Linden" two hours 
before the procession was due, I could not get anywhere 
near the broad central avenue down which it would 
pass. I chartered a taxi which had foundered in the 
throng, and perched on top. The Government, always 
attentive to the patriotic education of the children, had 
given special orders for such occasions. The little ones 
were brought to the front by the police, and boys were 
even permitted to climb the sacred Linden trees that 
they might better see what the Fatherland had done. 

The triumphal column entered through the Kaiser 
'Arch of the Brandenburger Tor, and bedlam broke loose 



WHEN SKIES WERE BLUE 25 

during the passing of the captured cannon of Russia, 
Erance, and Belgium — these last cast by German work- 
men at Essen and fired by Belgian artillerists against 
German soldiers at Liege. 

The gates of Paris ! Then the clear-cut German of- 
ficial reports became vague for a few days about the 
West, but had much of Hindenburg and victory in the 
East. Democracies wash their dirty linen in public, 
while absolute governments tuck theirs out of sight, 
where it usually disappears, but sometimes unexpectedly 
develops spontaneous combustion. 

iN'obody — outside of the little circle — questioned the 
delay in entering Paris. Everything was going accord- 
ing to plan, was the saying. I suppose sheep entertain 
a somewhat similar attitude when their leader conducts 
them over a precipice. Antwerp must be taken 'first — 
that was the key to Paris and London. Such was the 
gossip when the scene was once more set in Belgium, 
and the great Skoda mortars pulverised forts which on- 
paper were impregnable. Many a time during the first 
days of October I left my glass of beer or cup of tea 
half finished and rushed from cafe and restaurant with 
the crowd to see if the newspaper criers of headlines 
were announcing the fall of the fortress on the Scheldt. 
How those people discussed the terms of the coming 
early peace, terms which were not by any means easy ! 
Berlin certainly had its thumbs turned down on the 
rest of Europe. 

With two other Americans I sat with a group of pros- 
perous Berliners in their luxurious club. Waiters 
moved noiselessly over costly rugs and glasses clinked, 
while these men seriously discussed the probable terms 



26 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Germany would soon impose on a conquered continent. 
Belgium would, of course, be incorporated into the Ger- 
man Empire, and Antwerp would be the chief outlet for 
Germany's commerce — and how that commerce would 
soon boom at the expense of Great Britain! Erance 
would now have an opportunity to develop her socialis- 
tic experiments, as she would be permitted to maintain 
only a very small army. The mistake of 18Y0 must not 
be repeated. This time there would be no paltry levy 
of five billion francs. A great German Empire would 
rise on the ruins of the British. Commercial gain was 
the theme. I did not gather from the conversation that 
anybody but Germany would be a party to the peace. 

A man in close touch with things military entered 
at midnight. His eyes danced as he gave us new in- 
formation about Antwerp. Clearly the city was 
doomed. 

I did not sleep that night. I packed. IsText evening 
I was in Holland. I saw a big story, hired a car, picked 
up a Times courier, and, after "fixing" things with the 
Dutch guards, dashed for Antwerp. The long story of a 
retreat with the rearguard of the Belgian Army has no 
place here. But there were scenes which contrasted 
with the boasting, confident, joyous capital I had left. 
Belgian horses drawing dejected families, weeping on 
their household goods, other families with everything 
they had saved bundled in a tablecloth or a hand- 
kerchief. Some had their belongings tied on a bicycle, 
others trundled wheel-barrows. Valuable draught dogs, 
harnessed, but drawing no cart, were led by their mas- 
ters, while other dogs that nobody thought of just fol- 
lowed along. And tear-drenched faces everywhere. 



WHEN SKIES WERE BLUE 27 

Back in Bergen-op-Zoom and Putten I had seen chalk 
writing on brick walls saying that members of certain 
families had gone that way and would wait in certain 
designated places for other members who chanced to 
pass. On the road, now dark, and fringed with pines, 
I saw a faint light flicker. A group passed, four very 
old women tottering after a very old man, he holding a 
candle before him to light the way. 

As I jotted down these things and handed them to 
my courier I thought of the happy faces back in Ber- 
lin, of jubilant crowds dashing from restaurants and 
cafes as each newspaper edition was shouted out, and 
I knew that the men in the luxurious club were figuring 
out to what extent they could mulct Belgium. 

I pressed on in the dark and joined the Belgian army 
and the British ISTaval Brigade falling back before the 
Germans. I came upon an American, now captain of a 
Belgian company. "It's a damn shame, and I hate to 
admit it," he said, "but the Allies are done for." That 
is the way it looked to us in the black hours of the re- 
treat. 

Soldiers were walking in their sleep. Some sank, too 
exhausted to continue. An English sailor, a tireless 
young giant, trudged on mile after mile with a Belgian 
soldier on his back. Both the Belgian's feet had been 
shot off and tightly bound handkerchiefs failed to check 
the crimson trail. 

London and Paris were gloomy, but Berlin was bask- 
ing in the bright morning sunshine of the war. 

Although the fronts were locked during the winter, 
the German authorities had good reason to feel opti- 



28 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

mistic about the coming spring campaign. They knew 
that they had increased their munition output enor- 
mously, and their spies told them that Russia had prac- 
tically run out of ammunition, while England had rtot 
yet awakened to the realisation that this is a war of 
shells. 

The public saw the result in the spring. The armies 
of the Tsar fell back all along the line, while in Ger- 
many the flags were waving and the bells of victory 
were pealing. 

All through this there was unity In, Germany, a unity 
that the Germans felt and gloried in. "No other nation 
acts as one man in this wonderful time as do we Ger- 
mans," they told the stranger again and again. Unity 
and Germany became synonymous in my mind. 

Love of country and bitterness against the enemy are 
intensified in a nation going to war. It is something 
more than this, however, which has imbued and sus- 
tained the flaming spirit of Germany during this war. 
In July, 1914, the Government deliberately set out to 
overcome two great forces. The first was the growing 
section of her anti-militaristic citizens, and the second 
was the combination of Great Powers which she made 
up her mind she must fight sooner or later if she would 
gain that place in the sun which had dazzled her so 
long. 

Her success against the opposition within her w:as 
phenomenal. Germany was defending herself against 
treacherous attack — that was the watchword. The So- 
cial Democrats climbed upon the band-waggon along 
with the rest for the joy-ride to victory, and they re- 



WHEN SKIES WERE BLUE 29 

mained on the band-waggon for more than a year — 
then some of them dropped off. 

The story of how all Germans were mad^ to think 
as one man is a story of one of the greatest phenomena 
of history. It is my purpose in the next few chapters 
to show how the German Government creates unity. 
Then, in later chapters, I will describe the forces tend- 
ing to disintegrate that wonderful unity. 

Germany entered the war with the Government in 
control of all the forces affecting public opinion. The 
only way in which newspaper editors, reporters, lec- 
turers, professors, teachers, theatre managers, and pul- 
pit preachers could hope to accomplish anything in the 
world was to do something to please the Government. 
To displease the Government meant to be silenced or to 
experience something worse. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CEIME AGAINST THE CHILDREN" 

THE boys and girls of Germany play an important 
part in die grosse Zeit (this great wartime). 
Every atom of energy that can be dragged out of the 
children has been put to practical purpose. 

Their little souls, cursed by "incubated hate," have 
been so worked upon by the State schoolmasters that 
they have redoubled their energies in the tasks imposed 
upon them of collecting gold, copper, nickel, brass, 
paper, acorns, blackberries, blueberries, rubber, woollen 
and war loan money. 

All this summer on release from school, which com- 
mences at seven and closes at three in most parts of 
Germany, the hours varying in some districts, the chil- 
dren, in organised squads, have been put to these im- 
portant purposes of State. They had much to do with 
the getting in of the harvest. 

The schoolmaster has played his part in the training 
of the child to militarism. State worship, and enemy 
hatred as effectively as the professor and the clergyman. 

Here are two German children's school songs, that 
are being sung daily. Both of them are creations of 
the war: both written by schoolmasters. The particu- 
larly offensive song about King Edward and England 
is principally sung by girls — the future mothers of Ger- 
many : — 

30 



CRIME AGAINST THE CHILDREN 31 

O England, O England, 

Wie gross sind Deine Liigen ! 

1st Dein Verbrechen noch so gross, 

Du schwindelst Dich vom Galgen los. 

O Eduard, O Eduard, du Muster aller Flirsten, 

!N^ichts hattest Du von einem Rex, 

Du eitler Schlips — und Westenfex. 
[Oh, England, oh, England, how great are thy lies! 
However great thy crimes, thou cheatest the gallows. 
Oh, Edward, oh, Edward, thou model Prince! Thou 
hadst nothing Tcindly in thee, thou vain fop I] 

Da driiben, da driiben liegt der Eeind, 

In feigen Schiitzengraben, 

Wir greif en ihn an, und ein Hund, wer meint, 

Heut' wlirde Pardon gegeben. 

Schlagt alles tot, was um Gnade fleht, 

Schiesst alles nieder wie Hunde, 

Mehr Eeinde, mehr Eeinde ! sei euer Gebet 

In dieser Vergeltungsstunde. 

[^Over there in the cowardly trenches lies the enemy. 
We attach him, and only a dog will say that pardon 
should he given to-day. Strihe dead everything which 
prays for mercy. Shoot everything down lihe dogs. 
"More enemies, more enemies," he your prayer in this'' 
hour of retrihution.'] 

* The elementary schools, or Yolksschulen, are free, 
and attendance is compulsory from six to fourteen. 
There are some 61,000 free public elementary schools 
with over 10,000,000 pupils, and over 600 private ele- 
mentary schools, with 42,000 pupils who pay fees. 

Germany is a land of civil service, to enter which 
a certificate from a secondary school is necessary. Some 
authorities maintain that the only way to prevent being 
flooded with candidates is to make the examinations 
crushingly severe. Children are early made to realise 



32 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

that all hope of succeeding in life rests upon the pass- 
ing of these examinations. Thus the despair which 
often leads to suicide on the one hand and knowledge 
without keenness on the other. 

Hardly any class has suffered more heavily in the 
war than the masters of the State schools, which are 
equivalent to English Council schools and American 
puhlic schools. Th'e thinning 'of their ranks is an 
eloquent proof of the heaviness of the German death 
toll. Their places have been taken by elderly men, but 
principally by women. It is a kind of ^Nemesis that 
they should have fallen in the very cause they have 
been propagating for at least a generation. 

Those who knew only the old and pleasant Germany 
do not realise the speeding up of the hate machine that 
has taken place in the last decade. The protests against 
this State creation of hate grow less and less as the war 
proceeds. To-day only comparatively few members of 
the Social-Democrat Party raise objection to this horri- 
ble contamination of the minds of the coming genera- 
tion of German men and women. ITot much reflection 
is needed to see on what fruitful soil the great National 
Liberal Party, with its backing of capitalists, greedy 
merchants, chemists, bankers, ship and mine owners, 
is planting its seeds for the future. There is no cure 
for this evil state of affairs, but the practical proof, in- 
flicted by big cannon, that the world will not tolerate 
a nation of which the very children are trained to hate 
the rest of the world, and taught that German Kultur 
must be spread by bloodshed and terror. 

With the change in Germany has come a change in 
the family life. The good influence of some churches 



CRIME AGAINST THE CHILDREN 33 

has gone completely. They are part of the great war 
machine. The position of the mother is not what it was. 
The old German Hausfraii of the three K's, which I 
will roughly translate by "Kids, Kitchen, and Kirk," 
has become even more a servant of the master of the 
house than she was. The State has taken control of 
the souls of her children, and she has not even that 
authority that she had twenty years ago. The father has 
become even more important than of yore. The natural 
tendency of a nation of which almost every man is a 
soldier, is to elevate the man at the expense of' the 
woman, and the German woman has taken to her nr tv 
position very readily. She plays her wonderful part in 
the production of munitions, not as in Britain in a 
spirit of equality, but with a sort of admitted inferior- 
ity difficult to describe exactly. 

At four years of age the German male child begins 
to be a soldier. At six he is accustomed to walk in 
military formation. This system has a few advantages, 
but many disadvantages. A great concourse of infants 
can, for example, be marshalled through the streets of a 
city without any trouble at all. But that useful disci- 
pline is more than counterbalanced by the killing of in- 
dividuality. German children, especially during the 
war, try to grow up to be little men and women as 
quickly as possible. They have shared the long work- 
ing hours of the grown-ups, and late in the hot summer 
nights I have seen little Bavarian boys and girls who 
have been at school from seven and worked in the fields 
from three o'clock till dark, drinking their beer in the 
beer garden with a relish that showed they needed some 
stimulant. The beer is not Bass's ale, but it contains 



34 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

from two to five per cent, of alcohol. Unhealthy-look- 
ing little men are these German boys of from twelve to 
fifteen during the war. The overwork, and the lowering 
of the diet, has given them pasty faces and dark rings 
round their eyes. All games and amusements have been 
abandoned, and the only relaxation is corps marching 
through the streets at night, singing their hate songs 
and "Deutschland, Deutschland liber Alles." 

The girls, in like fashion, often spend their school 
interval in marching in columns of four, singing the 
same horrible chants. 

Up to the time of the scarcity of woollen materials, 
the millions of little German schoolgirls produced their 
full output of comforts for the troops. 

The practical result, from a military point of view, 
of training children to venerate the All-Highest War 
Lord and his family, together with his ancestors, was 
shown at the beginning of the war, when there came a 
great rush of volunteers (FreiwilUge), many of them 
beneath the military age, many of them beyond it. In 
most of the calculations of German man-power, some 
ally and neutral military writers seem to have forgotten 
these volunteers, estimated at two millions. 

A significant change in Germany is the cessation of 
the volunteer movement. Parents who gladly sent 
forth their boys as volunteers, are now endeavouring 
by every means in their power to postpone the evil day 
in the firm belief that peace will come before the age 
of military service has been reached. It is a change at 
least as significant as that which lies between the Ger- 
man's "We have won — the more enemies the better" of 
two years back, and the 'We must hold out" of to-day. 



CRIME AGAINST THE CHILDREN 35 

Of the school structures in modern Germany it would 
be idle to pretend that they are not excellent in every 
respect — perfect ventilation, sanitation, plenty of space, 
large numbers of class-rooms, and halls for the choral 
singing, which is part of the German system of educa- 
tion, and by which the "hate" songs have been so readily 
spread. The same halls are used for evening lectures 
for adults and night improvement schools. 

It is significant that all the schools built between 
1911 and 1914 were so arranged, not only in Germany, 
but throughout Austria, that they could be turned into 
hospitals with hardly any alteration. For this pur- 
pose, temporary partitions divided portions of the 
buildings, and an unusually large supply of water was 
laid on. Special entrances for ambulances were already 
in existence, baths had already been fitted in the 
wounded reception rooms, and in many cases sterilising 
sheds were already installed. The walls were made of a 
material that could be quickly whitewashed for the ex- 
termination of germs. If this obvious preparation for 
war is named to the average German, his reply is, "The 
growing jealousy of German culture and commerce 
throughout the world rendered necessary protective 
measures." 

A total lack of sense of humour and sense of pro- 
portion among the Germans can be gathered from the 
fact that Mr. Haselden's famous cartoons of Big and 
Little Willie, which have a vogue among Americans 
and other neutrals in Germany, and are by no means 
unkind, are regarded by Germans as a sort of sacrilege. 
These same people do not hesitate to circulate the most 
horrible and indecent pictures of President Wilson, 



36 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

King George, President Poincare, and especially of 
Viscount Grey of Palloden. The Tsar is usually de- 
picted covered with vermin. The King of Italy as an 
evil-looliing dwarf with a dagger in his hand. Only 
those who have seen the virulence of the caricatures, 
circulated by picture postcard, can have any idea of the 
horrible material on which the German child is fed. 
The only protest I ever heard came from the Artists' 
Society of Munich, who objected to these loathsome edu- 
cational efforts as being injurious to the reputation of 
artistic Germany and calculated to produce permanent 
damage to the juvenile mind. 

The atmosphere of the German home is so different 
from that in which I have been brought up in the 
United States, and have seen in England, that the Ger- 
mans are not at all shocked by topics of conversation 
I never referred to in other countries. Subjects are dis- 
cussed before German girls of eleven and twelve^ and 
German boys of the same age, that make an Anglo- 
Saxon anxious to get out of the room. I do not know 
whether it is this or the over-education that leads to 
the notorious child suicides of Germany, upon which 
so many learned treatises have been written. 

Just before the war it looked as though the German 
young man and woman were going to improve. Lawn 
tennis was spreading, despite old-fashioned prejudice.' 
Pootball was coming in. Rowing was making some 
progress, as you may have learned at Henley. It was 
not the spontaneous sport of Anglo-Saxon countries, but 
a more concentrated effort to imitate and to excel. 

Running races had become lately a German school 
amusement; but the results, as a rule, were that if 



CRIME AGAINST THE CHILDREN 37 

there were five competitors, the four losers entered a 
protest against the winner. In any case, each of the four 
produced excellent excuses why he had lost, other than 
the fact that he had been properly beaten. 

A learned American "exchange professor," who had 
returned from a German university, whom I met in 
Boston last year on my way from England to Germany, 
truly summed up the situation of athletics in German 
schools by saying, "German boys are bad-tempered losers 
and boastful winners." 

Upon what kinds of history is the German child being 
brought up ? The basis of it is the history of the House 
of Hohenzollern, with volumes devoted to the Danish 
and Austrian campaigns and minute descriptions of 
every phase of all the battles with France in 1870, 
written in a curious hysterical fashion. 

The admixture of Biblical references and German 
boasting are typical of the lessons taught at German 
Sunday Schools, which play a great role in war prop- 
aganda. The schoolmaster having done his work for 
six days of the week, the pastor gives an extra virulent 
dose on the Sabbath. Sedan Day, which before the war 
was the culmination of hate lessons, often formed the 
occasion of Sunday School picnics, at which the chil- 
dren sang new anti-French songs. 

There are some traits in German children most 
likeable. There are, for example, the respect for, and 
courtesy and kindness towards, anybody older than 
themselves. There are admiration for learning and 
ambition to excel in any particular task. There is a 
genuine love of music. On the other hand, there is 
much dishonesty, as may be witnessed by the proceed- 



38 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

ings in the German police courts, and has been proved 
in the gold and other collections. 

The elimination of real religion in the education of 
children and the substitution of worship of the State is, 
in the minds of many impartial observers, something 
approaching a national catastrophe. In any other com- 
munity it would probably be accompanied by anarchy. 
It certainly has swelled the calendar of German crime. 
German statistics prove that every sort of horror has 
been greatly on the increase in the last quarter of a 
century. 

I went to Germany the first time under the impres- 
sion that the Anglo-Saxon had much to learn from 
German education. I do not think that any observer 
in Germany itself to-day would find anything valuable 
to learn in the field of education, except when the Ger- 
man student comes to the time he takes up scentific re- 
search, to which the German mind, with its intense in- 
dustry and regard for detail, is so eminently suited. 
The German Government gives these young students 
every advantage. They are not, as with us, obliged to 
start money-making as soon as they leave school. As a 
rule a German boy's career is marked out for him by 
his parents and the schoolmaster at a very early age. 
If he is to follow out any one of the thousand branches 
of chemical research dealing with coal-tar products, for 
example, he knows his fate at fourteen or fifteen, and his 
eye is rarely averted from his goal until he has achieved 
knowledge and experience likely to help him in the 
great German trade success which has followed their 
utilisation of applied science. 



CHAPTER IV 

PULPITS OF HATE 

THE unpleasant part played by the clergy, and 
especially the Lutheran pastors, needs to be ex- 
plained to those who regard clerics as necessarily men 
of peace. 

The claim that the Almighty is on the side of Ger- 
many is not a new one. It was made as far back as 
the time of Frederick the Great. It was advanced in 
the war of 1870. It found strong voice at the time of 
the Boer War, when the pastors issued a united mani- 
festo virulently attacking Great Britain. 

These pastors are in communication with the German- 
American Lutherans in the United States, who exerted 
their influence to the utmost against the election of 
President Wilson, taking their instructions indirectly 
from the German Foreign Office. 

The state of affairs in the German churches is so dif- 
ferent from anything on the other side of the Atlantic, 
and in Great Britain, that it is almost as difficult to 
make people in England understand war-preaching min- 
isters as it is to make them comprehend war-teaching 
schoolmasters. 

My description of the poisoning by hate songs of the 
child mind of Germany at its most impressionable age 
came as a shock to many of my readers. But the hate 
songs of the children are not as fierce as the hate hymns 

39 



40 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

and prayers of the pastors. Do the public here realise 
that of the original Zeppelin fund hundreds of thou- 
sands of marks were subscribed in churches and chapels, 
and that models of Zeppelins have formed portions of 
church decorations at festivals? 

The pastors of the Prussian State Church are in one 
important respect the exact opposite of Martin Luther. 
He was thoroughly independent in spirit and rebelled 
against authority; they are abjectly submissive to it. 
As with the professor, so with the pastor, it is no mere 
accident that he is a puppet-tool of the State. The Ger- 
man Government leaves nothing to chance, and realising 
to the fullest the importance of docile and unified sub- 
jects both for interior rule and exterior conquest, it 
deliberately and artfully regulates those who create pub- 
lic opinion. 

There are some Lutheran pastors in Germany who 
work for an ideal, who detest the propagation of hate. 
Why, one may naturally ask, do they not cry out against 
such a pernicious practice ? They cannot, for they are 
muzzled. When a pastor enters this Church of which 
the Supreme War Lord is the head, his first oath is un- 
qualified allegiance to his King and State. If he keeps 
his oath he can preach no reform, for the State, being a 
perfect institution, can have no flaw. If he breaks his 
oath, which happens when he raises his voice in the 
slightest criticism, he is silenced. This means that he 
must seek other means of earning a livelihood — a thing 
almost impossible in a land where training casts a man 
in a rigid mould. Thus these parsons have their choice 
between going on quietly with their work and being 
nonentities in the public eye or bespattering the non- 



PULPITS OF HATE 41 

Germanic section of the world with the mire of hate. 
I regret to say that most of them choose the latter 
course. 

While I was in Germany I read a lenghty and solicit- 
out letter from Pastor Winter, of Bruch, addressed to 
Admiral von Tipitz, who had just retired for the osten- 
sible reason that he was unwell, hut whose illness was 
patently only diplomatic. The good pastor expressed 
the hope that his early recovery would permit the ad- 
miral to continue his noble work of olbiterating Eng- 
land. Pastor Ealk, of Berlin, is a typical fire-eater. 
His Whitsuntide address was an attack upon Anglo- 
Saxon civilisation and the urgent German niission of 
smashing Britain and America. The Easter sermons of 
hate, one of which I heard at Stettin, were especially 
bloodthirsty. Congregations are larger than usual on 
that day, which is intended to commemorate a spirit 
guite the opposite to hate. The clergy are instructed 
not to attack Prance or Russia, and so it comes about 
that, as I have previously pointed out, in Prussia, 
Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Brandenburg, and Sax- 
ony, the pastors of the State Church preach hatred of 
Britain as violently in their pulpits as in their pastoral 
visits. 

The pulpit orators, taking their tip from the Govern- 
ment, are also exhorting their congregations to "hold out 
and win the war." I know of one pastor in a good sec- 
tion of Berlin, however, who has recently lost consider- 
able influence in his congregation. Sunday after Sun- 
day his text has been, "Wir miissen durchhalten !" 
(We must hold out !) "ITo sacrifice should be too great 
for the Fatherland, no privation too arduous to be en- 



42 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

dured if one but has the spirit to conquer." He paid 
particular attention to the rapidly increasing number 
of people who grumble incessantly over the shortage of 
food. The good man was clearly losing patience with 
those who complained. 

One day thieves broke into his home and got away 
with an enormous amount of hams and other edibles. 
I remind the reader that ham had ere this become un- 
known in Berlin. Less than three hundred pigs were 
being killed there per week where formerly twenty-five 
thousand were slaughtered. The Government had more- 
over taken a house-to-house inventory of food, and 
hoarding had been made punishable by law. 

The story, of course, never appeared in the papers, 
since such divines are useful implements of the State, 
but the whole congregation heard of it, with the disas- 
trous consequence that the good man's future sermons 
on self-denial fell upon stony ground. 

One dear old lady, a widow, whose two sons had 
fallen in the war, told me that she had not gone to 
church for years, but after her second son fell she sought 
spiritual comfort in attending services every Sunday. 
"I am so lonesome now," she said, "and somehow I feel 
that when I hear the word of God I shall be nearer to 
my boys." 

I met her some weeks later on her way home from 
church. "It is no use," she sighed, shaking her head 
sadly, "the church does not satisfy the longing in my 
heart. It is not for such as me. liTothing but war, war, 
war, and hate, hate, hate !" 

The German ISTavy League, an aggressive body which 
had gathered around it more than a million members 



PULPITS OF HATE 43 

previous to the war, stirred up anti-British feeling by 
means of leaflets, newspaper articles, kinematograph 
exhibitions, and sermons. Among the bitterest of the 
preachers are returned missionaries from British pos- 
sessions. 

Although the social position of the pastor in a German 
village is less than that of a minor Government ofl&cial, 
yet he and his wife wield considerable influence. The 
leading pastors receive each week many of the Govern- 
ment propaganda documents, including a digest carefully 
prepared for them by the Foreign Press Department. 
I obtained some copies of this weekly digest, but was 
unable to bring them out of Germany. What purport 
to be extracts from the London newspapers are ingenious 
distortions. Sometimes a portion of an article is re- 
printed with the omission of the context, thus entirely 
altering its meaning. The recipients of this carefully 
prepared sheet believe implicitly in its authenticity. 
Any chance remark of a political nobody in the House 
of Commons that seems favourable to Germany is 
quoted extensively. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, in the 
eyes of the German village clergyman, ranks as one of 
the most important men in the British Empire. Mr. 
Stanton, M.P., in their view, is a low hireling of the 
British Government, doing dirty work in the hope of 
getting political preferment. The Labour Leader, which 
I have not seen in any house or hotel or on any news- 
paper stall, is, according to this digest, one of the lead- 
ing English newspapers, and almost the only truth- 
telling organ of the Allies. 

These people really believe this. When home-staying 
Englishmen talk to me about the German War party, I 



44 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

find it difficult to explain to them that the German 
War party is practically the whole country. 

One or two better-travelled and better-educated pas- 
tors have expressed mild regret at the bloodthirsty atti- 
tude of their brethren in private conversation. But I 
never heard of one who had the courage to "speak out in 
open meeting." 

The modern, material Germany has not much use for 
religion except as a factor in government. The notori- 
ous spread of extreme agnosticism in the last quarter of 
a century renders it essential for the clergy to hold their 
places by stooping to the violence of the Professors. 
Mixed with their attitude of hostility to Britain is a 
considerable amount of professional jealousy and envy. 
A number of German pastors paid a visit to London 
some two or three years before the outbreak of war, and 
I happened to meet one of them recently in Germany. 
So far from being impressed by what he had seen there, 
he had come to the conclusion that the English clergy, 
and especially the ISTonconformists, were an overpaid 
and undisciplined body, with no other aim than their 
personal comfort. He had visited Westminster Abbey, 
St. Paul's, Spurgeon's Tabernacle, the City Temple, and 
had studied — so he told me — English Wesleyanism and 
Congregationalism in several provincial centres. He 
was particularly bitter about one ^Nonconformist who 
had accepted a large salary to go to the United States. 
He returned to Germany impressed with the idea that 
the ^Nonconformist and State Churches alike were a 
body of sycophants, sharing the general decadent state 
of the English. What struck him principally was what 
he referred to continually as the lack of discipline and 



PULPITS OF HATE 45 

■uniformity. Each man seemed to take his own point 
of view, without any regard to the opinions of the partic- 
ular religious denomination to which he belonged. All 
were grossly ignorant of science and chemistry, and all 
were very much overpaid. Here, I think, lay the sting 
of his envy, and it is part of the general jealousy of Eng- 
land, a country where everybody is supposed to be under- 
worked and overpaid. 

The only worse country in this respect from the Ger- 
man point of view is the United States, "where even 
the American Lutheran pastors have fallen victims to 
the lust for money." The particular Lutheran of whom 
I am speaking had been the guest of an English Non- 
conformist minister and his wife, who had evidently 
tried to be as hospitable as possible, and had no doubt 
put themselves out to take him for excursions and out- 
ings in the Shakespeare country. 

"It was nothing but eating and drinking and sight- 
seeing," remarked the Herr Pastor, 

I suggested that he was a guest, to be looked after. 

*'I can assure you," he replied, "that Mr. had 

nothing to do all day but read the newspapers, and 
drink tea with his congregation. He did not take the 
trouble to grow his own vegetables, and all he had to do 
was to preach on Sundays and attend a very unruly 
Sunday school. His wife, too, was not dressed as one 
of ours." 

He explained to me that his own life was very dif- 
ferent. He eked out his minute salary by a small sci- 
entifically managed farm, and I gathered the impression 
that he was much more of a farmer than a pastor, for he 
deplored his inability to obtain imported nitrates owing 



46 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

to the blockade. The only question on which he was 
at all unorthodox was that of the Junkers and their 
regrettable power of holding potatoes, pigs, and other 
supplies while small men like him had been obliged to 
sell. He had a good collection of modern scientific agri- 
cultural works, of which the Germans have an 
abundance. 

But while admiring the energy of the great capitalists 
and the ^N'ational Liberal Party, the average clergyman 
tends towards sympathy with the Agrarians. The pas- 
tor of the small towns and villages, who is very much 
under the thumb of the local Junker or rich manufac- 
turer, has as his highest ambition the hope that he and 
his wife may be invited to coffee at least twice a year. 
The pastor's wife is delighted to be condescendingly 
received by the great lady. Herr Pastor talks agricul- 
ture with Herr Baron, and Frau Pastor discusses past 
and coming incidents in the local birth rate with Frau 
Baron. Snobbery has no greater exemplification than 
in the relations of the local Lutheran pastor and the 
local landlord or millionaire. 

A sidelight on German mentality is contained in a 
little conversation which I had with a clergyman in the 
Province of Posen. He knew England well, by resi- 
dence and by matrimonial connections. 

This is how he explained the battle of the Somme. 
I give his own words : — 

"Many wounded men are coming back to our Church 
from the dreadful Western front. They have been 
fighting the British, and they find that so ignorant are 
the British of warfare that the British soldiers on the 
Somme refuse to surrender, not knowing that they are 



PULPITS OF HATE 47 

really beaten, with the result that terrible losses are 
inflicted upon our brave troops." 

In this exact report of a conversation is summed up 
a great deal of German psychology. 

For the Salvation Army a number of Germans have" 
genuine respect, because it seems to be organised on 
some military basis. The Church of England they con- 
sider as degenerate as the Nonconformist. Both, they 
think, are mere refuges for money-making ecclesiastics. 



CHAPTER V 

PUPPET PEOFESSOES 

THE professor, like the army officer, has long been 
a semi-deity in Germany. ISTot only in his uni- 
versity lectures does he influence the students, and 
particularly the prospective teachers of secondary 
schools who hang on his words, but he writes the bulk 
of the historical, economic and political literature of the 
daily Press, the magazines and the tons of pamphlets 
which flood the country. 

Years before the war the Government corralled him 
for its own. It gave him social status, in return for 
which he would do his part to make the citizen an Tin- 
questioning, faithful and obedient servant of the State. 
As soon as he enters on his duties he becomes a civil 
servant, since the universities are State institutions. He 
takes an oath in which it is stipulated that he will 
not write or preach or do anything questioning the 
ways of the State. His only way to make progress 
in life, then, is to serve the State, to preach what it 
wishes preached, to teach history as it wishes history 
taught. 

The history of Prussia is the history of the House of 
HohenzoUern, and the members of the House,, genera- 
tion after generation, must all be portrayed as heroes. 
There was a striking illustration of this in 1913 when 
the Kaiser had Hauptmann's historical play suppressed 

48 



PUPPET PROFESSORS 49 

because it represented Frederick William III. in true 
light, as putty in the hands of l^apoleon. 

There is a small group of German professors inter- 
ested solely in scientific research, such as Professor 
Roentgen and the late Professor Ehrlich, which we ex- 
clude from the "puppet professors." Such men succeed 
through sheer ability and their results are their diplo- 
mas before the world, l^either shoulder-knots nor 
medals pinned in rows across their breasts would con- 
tribute one iota to their success, nor make that success 
the more glittering once it is achieved. 

One of these, a Bavarian of the old school, a thought- 
ful, liberal man who had travelled widely, told me that 
he deplored the depths of mental slavery to which the 
mass of the German professors had sunk. "They are 
living on the reputation made by us scientists," he de- 
clared. "They write volumes and they go about preach- 
ing through the land, but they contribute nothing, 
absolutely nothing, to the uplifting of humanity and of 
the country." He told me of how Government spies 
before the war and duting it watch professors who are 
suspected of having independent ways of thought, and 
for the slightest "offence" such as being in the audience 
of a Social Democratic lecture (this before the war, of 
course ; such meetings are forbidden now) they are put 
on the official black-list and promotion is closed to them 
for ever. 

In warring Germany I found professors vying with 
one another to sow hatred among the people, to show 
that Germany is always right, and that she is fighting a 
war of defence, which she tried to avoid by every means 
in her power, and that any methods employed to crush 



so THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Great Britain, the real instigator of the attack on Ger- 
many, are good methods. 

With the pastors, they spread the idea that "Ger- 
many is the rock selected by Almighty God upon 
which to build His Empire." J. P. Bang, the able Dan- 
ish Professor of Theology at the University of Copen- 
hagen, writes clearly on this point. He says, when 
describing Emanuel Geibel : — 

"He has succeeded in finding the classical formula 
for the German arrogance, which of necessity demands 
that Germanism shall be placed above everything else 
in the world, and at the same time in giving this arro- 
gance such an expression that it shall not conflict with 
the German demand for moral justification. This has 
been achieved in the lines which have been quoted times 
without number in the newest German war literature: 

Und es mag am deutschen Wesert 
Einmal noch die Welt genesen! 
(The world may yet again be healed by Germanism.) 

"The hope here expressed has become a certainty for 
modern Germany, and the Germans see in this the moral 
basis for all their demands. Why must Germany be 
victorious, why must she have her place in the sun, why 
must her frontiers be extended, why is all opposition 
to Germany shameful, not to say devilish, why must 
Germany become a world-empire, why ought Germany 
and not Great Britain to become the great Colonial 
Power ? Why, because it is through the medium of Ger- 
manism that the world is to be healed ; it is upon Ger- 
manism that the salvation of the world depends. That 
is why all attacks against Germanism are against God's 
plans, in opposition to His designs for the world; in 



PUPPET PROFESSORS 51 

short, a sin against God. The Germans do not seem to 
he ahle to understand that other nations cannot be par- 
ticularly delighted at being described as sickly shoots 
which can only be healed by coming under the influence 
of German fountains of health. Yet one would think 
that, if they would only reflect a little upon what the 
two lines quoted above imply, they would be able in 
some measure to understand the dislike for them, which 
they declare to be so incomprehensible. 

"He also prophesied about the great master who 
would arise and create the unity of Germany. This 
prophecy was brilliantly fulfilled in Bismarck. After 
1866 he loudly clamours for Alsace-Lorraine. This he 
cannot reasonably have expected to obtain without war ; 
but when the war comes we hear exactly the same tale 
as now of the Germans' love of peace and the despicable 
deceitfulness of their enemies. 'And the peace shall be 
a German peace; now tremble before the sword of God 
and of Germany ye who are strong in impiety and fruit- 
ful in bloodguiltiness.' " 

Hate lectures have been both fashionable and popular 
in Germany during the war. I was attracted to one 
in Munich by flaming red and yellow posters which an- 
nounced that Professor Werner Sombart of the Univer- 
sity of Berlin would speak at the Vierjahreszeiten Hall 
on "Unser Hass gegen England" (Our Hatred of Eng- 
land). 

I sat among the elite of the Bavarian capital in a 
large hall with even the standing room filled, when a 
black-bearded professor stepped upon the stage amid 
a flutter of handclapping and proceeded to his task 
without any introduction. He was a Professor of 



5 2 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Hatred, and it soon became quite clear that he was full 
of his subject. His lank frame leaned over the foot- 
lights and he wound and unwound his long, thin fingers, 
while his lips sneered and his sharp black eyes gleamed 
venom as he instructed business men, bankers, smart 
young oflScers, lorgnetted dowagers and sweet-faced 
girls, in the duty of hating with the whole heart and the 
whole mind. I soon felt that if Lissauer is the Horace 
of Hate, Sombart is its Demosthenes. 

"It is not our duty {duty is always a good catchword 
in German appeal) to hate individual Englishmen, such 
as Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd 
George. !No, we must go far beyond that. We must 
hate the very essence of everything English. We must 
hate the very soul of England. An abysmal gulf yawns 
between the two nations which can never, and must 
never, be bridged over. We need borrow Kultur from 
no nation on earth, for we ourselves have developed the 
highest Kultur in the world." 

The professor continued in this strain for an hour 
and a half, and concluded with the rather striking 
statements that hatred is the greatest force in the world 
to overcome tremendous obstacles, and that either one 
must hate or one must fearj 

The moral is, of course, obvious. ISTobody wishes to 
be a coward, therefore the only alternative is to hate. 
Therefore, hate England ! 

I watched the audience during the lecture and did 
not fail to note the close attention shown the professor 
and the constant nods and sighs of assent of those about 
me. I was not, however, prepared for the wild tumult 
of applause at the finish. Indeed the admiring throng 



PUPPET PROFESSORS 53 

rushed to the stage to shower him with ad- 
miration. 

'^Das war aher zu schon!'* sighed a dowager near me. 

"J a, ja, wunderhar. Ein Berliner Professor!" And 
the student with Schmissen (sabre cuts) across his close- 
cropped head smacked his lips with satisfaction over the 
words much as he might have done over his Stein at the 
Fiirstenhof. 

I investigated Professor Sombart and learned from 
authority which is beyond question that he was an out 
and out Government agent foisted on to the University 
of Berlin against the wishes of its faculty. 

The name of Professor Joseph Kohler is known all 
over the world to men who have the slightest acquain- 
tance with German jurisprudence. His literary output 
has been enormous and he has unquestionably made 
many valuable contributions to legal science. Even 
he, however, cannot do the impossible, and his ^"^Not 
Jcennt hein Gehot" (N'ecessity knows no law), an at- 
tempt in the summer of 1915 to justify the German 
invasion of Belgium, makes Germany's case on this 
particular point appear worse than ever. 

The Empire of Rome and the Empire of l!^apoleon 
worked upon the principle that necessity knows no law. 
Why should not the Empire of William II. ? That is 
the introductory theme. The reader then wades through 
page after page of classical philosophy, biblical philos- 
ophy, and modern German philosophy which support 
the theory that a sin may not always be a sin. One may 
steal, for example, if by so doing a life be saved. It 
naturally follows from this that when a nation is con- 
fronted by a problem which involves its very existence 



54 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

it maj do anything which may work to its advantage. 
Thus Germany did right in attacking the little country 
she had solemnly sworn to defend, and history will later 
prove that the real barbarians of the war are the Amer- 
icans, since they are so abjectly ignorant as to call the 
Germans barbarians for acting as they did. So argues 
Joseph Kohler, who certainly ranks among the first 
half-dozen professors of Germany. 

There are a few. professors of international law in 
Germany, however, who have preserved a legally- 
balanced attitude despite their sympathies. One of 
these wrote an article for a law periodical, many of the 
statements of which were in direct contradiction to 
statements in the German Press. The German people, 
for example, were being instructed — a not difficult task 
— that Britain was violating international law when her 
vessels hoisted a neutral flag during pursuit. This pro- 
fessor simply quoted paragraph 81 of the German Prize 
Code which showed that orders to German ships were 
precisely the same. Were this known to the German 
population one of the ten thousand hate tricks would be 
out of commission. Therefore, this and similar articles 
must be suppressed, not because they are not true, but 
because they would interfere with the delusion of hate 
which saturates the mind of the new Germany. I have 
seen articles returned to this distinguished writer with 
the censor stamp : Not to he published till after the war. 

When a winning Germany began to grow angry at 
American munition deliveries I heard much talk of the 
indemnity which the United States would be compelled 
to pay after Europe had been duly disposed of. Pro- 
fessor Hermann Oncken, of the University of Heidel- 
berg, made this his theme in a widely read booklet, en- 



PUPPET PROFESSORS 55 

titled, "Deutschlands Weltkrieg und die Deutsch-Amerir 
leaner." 

Professor P. von Gast, of the Technical College of 
Aachen, does not appear to realise that his country has 
a suiEcient job on her hands in Europe and Africa, but 
thinks the midst of a great war a suitable time to arouse 
his countrymen against the United States in Latin 
America. He explains that the Monroe Doctrine was 
simply an attempt on the part of the great Anglo-Saxon 
Kepublic to gobble up the whole continent to the south 
for herself. "All the world must oppose America in this 
attempt," he feels. 

Then there is Professor Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who 
writes on reprisals in the Juristenhlatt of July, 1916. 
It should be borne in mind that he is a professor of law 
and that he is writing in a book which is read by legal 
minds and not by the general public ; all the more reason 
that we should expect something that would contain 
common sense. Professor Bartholdy, after expressing 
his profound horror over the French raid on Karlsruhe, 
hastens to explain that such methods can be of not the 
slightest military advantage to the French, but will only 
arouse Germany to fight all the harder. He deplores 
enemy attacks on unfortified districts, and claims that 
the French military powers confess that such acts are 
not glorious by their failure to pin decorations on the 
breasts of the aviators who perpetrate them, in the same 
way as the German Staff honours heroes like Boelke and 
Immelmann, who fight, as do all German aviators, like 
men. 

There have been many incidents outside of Germany 
of which the professor apparently has never heard, or 
else his sense of humour is below the zero mark. 



$6 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

My talks with German professors impressed me with 
how little most of them keep in touch with the war 
situation from day to day and from month to month. 
A Berlin professor of repute with whom I sipped coffee 
one day in the Cafe Bauer expressed the greatest sur- 
prise when he heard that a neutral could actually get 
from America to Germany. I heard this opinion very 
often among the common people, but had supposed that 
doctors of philosophy were somewhat better informed. 

During my conversation with another professor, 
whose war remarks have been circulated in the neutral 
countries by the Official ISTews Service, he remarked that 
he read the London Times and other English news- 
papers regularly. 

"Oh, so you get the English papers ?" I asked, fully 
aware that one may do so in Germany. 

"!N^ot exactly," returned the professor. "The Gov- 
ernment has a very nice arrangement by which con- 
densed articles from the English newspapers are pre- 
pared and sent to us professors." 

This was the final straw. I had always considered 
professors to be men who did research work, and I sup- 
posed that professors on j)olitical science and history 
consulted original sources when possible. Yet the Ger- 
man professor of the twentieth century is content to 
take what the Government gives him and only what the 
Government gives to him. 

Thus we find that the professor is a great power in 
Germany in the control of the minds of the people, and 
that the Government controls the mind of the professor. 
He is simply one of the instruments in the German 
Government's Intellectual Blockade of the German 
people. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE LIE ON THE FILM 

AT the end of an absorbingly interesting reel show- 
ing the Kaiser reviewing his troops, a huge green 
trade-mark globe revolved with a streamer fluttering 
Berlin. The lights were turned on and the operator 
looked over his assortment of reels. 

An American had been granted permission to take 
war films in Germany in the autumn of 1914, to be 
exhibited in the United States. After he had arrived, 
however, the authorities had refused to Het him take 
pictures with the army, but, like the proverbial druggist, 
had offered him something "just as good." In London, 
on his return journey home, he showed to a few news- 
paper correspondents the fijlms which Germa'py had 
foisted upon him. 

"The next film, gentlemen, will depict scenes in East 
Prussia," the operator announced. 

Although I had probably seen most of these pictures 
in Germany, my interest quickened, for I had been 
through that devastated province during and after the 
first invasion. Eamiliar scenes of ruined villages and 
refugees scudding from the sulphur storm passed before 
my eyes. Then came the ruined heap of a once stately 
church tagged Beautiful Church in Allenhurg Destroyed 
by the Russians. The destruction seemed the more 
heinous since a trace of former beauty lived through the 

57 



5 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

ruins, and you could not view this link of evidence 
against the Russians without a feeling of resentment. 
This out-of-the-way church was not architecturally im- 
portant to the world as is Rheims Cathedral, to be sure, 
but the destruction seemed just as wanton. 

The next picture flashed on the screen showed a Rus- 
sian church intact, with the simple title, Russian Church 
at PotetschM. The moral of the sequence was clear. 
The German Government, up to the minute in all things, 
knows the vivid educative force of the kinema, and 
realises the effect of such a sequence of pictures upon 
her people at home and neutrals throughout the world. 
It enables them to see for themselves the difference 
between the barbarous Russians and the generous 
Germans. 

The reel buzzed on, but I did not see the succeeding 
pictures, for my thoughts were of far-off East Prussia, 
of Allenburg, and of the true story of the ruined church 
by the AUe River. 

Tannenberg had been fought, Samsanow had been 
decisively smashed in the swamps and plashy streams, 
and Hindenburg turned north-east to cut off Rennen- 
kampf's army, which had advanced to the gates of 
Konigsberg. The outside world had been horrified by 
stories of German crime in Belgium; whereupon Ger- 
many counter attacked with reports of terrible atrocities 
perpetrated by the Russians, of boys whose right hands 
had been cut off so that they could never serve in the 
army, of wanton murder, rapine and burnings. I read 
these stories in the Berlin papers, and they filled me 
with a deep feeling against Russia. 



THE LIE ON THE FILM 59 

One of the most momentous battles of history was 
being fought in the West, and the Kaiser's armies were 
in full retreat from the Marne to the Aisne, but Berlin 
knew nothing of this. Refugees from East Prussia 
with white arm-bands filled the streets, Hindenburg 
and victory were on every tongue, Paris was forgotten, 
and all interest centred in the Eastern theatre of war. 

That was in the good old days when the war was 
young, when armies were taking up positions, when the 
management of newspaper reporters was not developed 
to a fine art, when Europe was topsy-turvy, when it was 
quite the thing for war correspondents to outwit the 
authorities and see all they could. 

I resolved to make an attempt to get into East Prus- 
sia, and as it was useless to wait for ofiicial permission 
— that is, if I was to see things while fresh' — I de- 
termined to play the game and trust to luck. 

Danzig seemed the end of my effort, for the railroad 
running east was choked with military trains, the trans- 
portation of troops and supplies in one direction and 
prisoners and wounded in the other. By good fortune, 
however, I booked passage on a boat for Konigsberg. 

The little steamer nosed its way through a long lock 
canal amid scenery decidedly Dutch, with old grey 
windmills dotting broad flat stretches, black and white 
cows looming large and distinct on the landscape, and 
fish nets along the water's edge. To the right the shore 
grew bolder after we entered the Frishes Haff, a broad 
lagoon separated from the Baltic by a narrow strip of 
pasture land. Red sails glowed in the clear sunshine, 
adding an Adriatic touch. Cumbersome junk-like boats 
flying the Red Cross passed west under full sail. Ger- 



6o THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

many was using every man at her disposal to transport 
wounded and prisoners from the battle region which we 
were drawing near. 

A smoky haze ahead indicated Konigsberg. The 
mouth of the Pregel bustled with activity, new fortifi- 
cations were being everywhere thrown up, while indis- 
tinct field-grey figures swarmed over the plain like ants. 
We glided through forests of masts and rigging and slid 
up to a pier opposite great sagging warehouses behind 
which the sun was setting. 

As I picked up my bag to go ashore, a heavy hand 
fell on my shoulder and I was asked to wait until we 
were boarded from the police boat which was puffing 
alongside. My detainer, a government inspector, a man 
of massive frame with deep set eyes and a shaggy black 
beard, refused to say more than that the police wished 
to see me. They had been signalled and were coming 
to the boat expressly for that purpose. 

American ammunition had not begun to play its part 
in German public opinion at that time, and, moreover, 
America was being hailed everywhere in Germany as a 
possible ally against Japan. Therefore, although only a 
few days previously Russian guns had been booming 
less than a dozen miles away, and Konigsburg was now 
the base against Rennenkampf , my presence was toler- 
ated, and I finally managed to get lodgings for the night 
after I had found two hotels turned into hospitals. 

I spent the following day trying to obtain permission 
to pass the cordon of sentries outside the city, but I 
received only the advice to go back to Berlin and apply 
at the Auswdrtiges Ami (Eoreign Office). I did not 
wish to wait in Berlin until this campaign was over j I 



THE LIE ON THE FILM 6i 

wished to follow on the heels of the army through the 
ruined land and catch up to the fighting if possible. 
American correspondents had done this in Belgium, I 
myself had done it with the Austrians against the Serbs, 
and I succeeded in East Prussia, but not through Berlin. 

I was well aware that Germany was making a tre- 
mendous bid for neutral favour. I had furthermore 
heard so much of Russian atrocities that I was convinced 
that the stories were true; consequently I decided to 
play the role of an investigator of Muscovite crime. 
I won Herr Meyer of the Wolif Telegraph Bureau, who 
sent me along with his card to Commandant von Ranch, 
who at first refused to let me proceed, but after I had 
hovered outside his door for three days, finally gave me 
a pass to go to Tapiau, the high-water mark of the Rus- 
sian invasion. 

That night, "by chance," in the Deutsclier Hof, I met 
the black-bearded ofiicial who had arrested me on the 
boat, and I told him that I had permission to go to Ta- 
piau next morning. When he became convinced that 
I was a professional atrocity hunter who believed that 
the Russians had been brutal, his hospitality became 
boundless, and over copious steins of Munich beer he 
described the invaders in a manner which made Glad- 
stone's expose of the Turks in Bulgaria, the stories of 
Captain Kidd, and the tales of the Spanish Inquisition 
seem like essays on brotherly love. He was particularly 
incensed at the Russians because they had destroyed 
AUenburg, for Allenburg was his home. One of the 
stories on which he laid great stress was that a band of 
Cossacks had pillaged the church just outside of Allen- 
burg on the road to Eriedland, after they had driven 
sixty innocent maidens into it and outraged them there. 



62 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

A train of the Militdr-Personenzug variety bore me 
next morning through a country of barbed wire, gun 
emplacements and fields seamed with trenches to Ta- 
piau, a town withered in the blast of war. Two ruined 
bridges in the Pregel bore silent testimony to the straits 
of the retreating Germans, for the remaining ends on 
the further shore were barricaded with scraps of iron 
and wood gathered from the wreckage. 

Landsturm guards examined my pass, which was 
good only for Tapiau and return. I decided to miss 
the train back, however, and push on in the wake of the 
army to Wehlau. Outside of Tapiau I was challenged 
by a sentry, who, to my amazement, did not examine my 
now worthless pass when I pulled it from my pocket, 
but motioned me on. 

The road ran through eye-tiring stretches of meadows 
pockmarked with great shell holes full of black water. 
I came upon the remains of an old brick farmhouse bat- 
tered to dust in woods which were torn to splinters by 
shell, bullet and shrapnel. The Russians had bom- 
barded Tapiau from here, and had in turn been shelled 
in the trenches which they had dug and chopped in the 
labyrinth of roots. Among the debris of tins, cases, 
knapsacks and cartridge clips were fragments of uni- 
forms which had been blown off Russian bodies by Ger- 
man shells, while on a branch above my head a 
shrivelled human arm dangled in the light breeze of 
September. 

I left the sickening atmosphere of the woods behind 
and pushed on to Wehlau, a primitive little town situ- 
ated on the meadows where the Alle flows into the 
Pregel. Here my troubles began. Soldiers stared at 



THE LIE ON THE FILM 63 

me as I walked through crooked, narrow streets un- 
evenly paved with small stones in a manner that would 
bring joy to the heart of a shoe manufacturer. The sun 
sank in a cloudless blaze behind a line of trenches on 
a gentle slope above the western shore when I entered 
the Gasthof Rahe, where I hoped to get a room for the 
night. 

I had no sooner crossed the threshold, however, than 
I was arrested and brought to the Etappen-Commandant 
in the Pregelstrasse. I fully expected to be placed un- 
der arrest or be deported, but I determined to put up the 
best bluff possible. A knowledge of Germans and their 
respect for any authority above that invested in their 
own individual selves led me to decide upon a bold 
course of action, so I resolved to play the game with a 
high hand and with an absolute exterior confidence of 
manner. 

Instead of waiting to be questioned when I was 
brought into the presence of the stern old officer, I told 
him at once that I had been looking for him. I informed 
him that Herr von Meyer and Commandant Kauch in 
Konigsberg were in hearty sympathy with my search for 
Russian atrocities, but although I succeeded in quieting 
any suspicions which the Commandant may have en- 
tertained, I found winning permission to stay in Wehlau 
an exceedingly difficult matter. 

Orders were orders! He explained that the battle 
was rolling eastward not far away and that I must go 
back. To add weight to what he said he read me a set 
of typewritten orders which had come from Berlin the 
day before. "Journalists are not allowed with the army 
or in the wake of the army in East Prussia. . . ." 



64 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

he read, in a tone which indicated that he considered the 
last word said. 

But I had become so fascinated with this battle- 
scarred, uncanny, out-of-the-way land that I resolved 
to try every means to stay. I declared that on this 
particular mission I was more of an investigator than a 
journalist, that I had the special task (self-imposed, 
to be sure) of investigating Russian atrocities ; that if 
Berlin reports were to be given credence abroad they 
must be substantiated by some impartial observer. If 
Germany would supply the atrocities, I would supply 
the copy. That she wished to do so was evidenced by 
the permissions granted me by Herr von Meyer of the 
Wolff Telegraph Bureau and Commandant Ranch of 
the capital of the devastated province. (I had passed 
beyond the point where I was told that I could go, but 
at any rate their names carried weight.) Would it not 
seem strange if the Commandant at Wehlau had me 
sent back after these great men had set their seal of 
approval upon my investigations ? After Germany had 
made such grave charges against the Russians, how 
would it impress American readers that the German 
Commandant at Wehlau could not make good and had 
sent me back ? 

Then, as a finishing stroke, I pulled my passport from 
my pocket and showed Berlin's approval of me stamped 
impressively in the right-hand corner. This vise was 
not at all unique with me. It had been affixed to the 
passports of thousands of Americans of all grades, and 
was merely to ensure passage from Germany into Hol- 
land. As I did not wish to impose upon the time of the 
Commandant I did not burden him with these extran- 



THE LIE ON THE FILM 65J 

eons details while he feasted his eyes on the magic 
Avords: Gesehen, Berlin. Mount Oljinpus, Mecca, Im- 
perial and Ecclesiastical Rome all rolled into one — 
that is authoritative Berlin to the German of the 
province. 

"Gesehen^ Berlin/' he repeated with reverence, care- 
fully folded the passport and deferentially handed it 
back to me. I saw that I was winning, so I sought to 
rise to the occasion. 

"And now, Herr Commandant," I began, "can you 
suggest where I may best begin my atrocity work to- 
morrow ? Or first, would it not be well for me to get a 
more complete idea of the invasion by seeing on the map 
just what routes the Russians took coming in V 

He unfolded a large military map of peerless Ger- 
man accuracy and regaled me for more than half an 
hour with the military features of the campaign. 

"Just tell me the worst things that the Russians have 
done," I began, "and I will start investigating them to- 
morrow." 

Then he anathematised the Russians and all things 
Russian, while his orderly stood stiffly and admiringly 
at attention and the other officers stopped in their tracks. 

"First you should visit the ruins of the once beauti- 
ful old castle at Labiau destroyed by the beasts," he 
thundered. "And they also wantonly destroyed the 
magnificent old church near by." 

He followed with an account of the history of the 
castle, and it was clear that he was deeply affected by 
the loss of these landscape embellishments which he had 
learned to love so much that they became part of his life, 
and that their destruction deeply enraged him against 



66 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

the enemy. Though I saw his point of view and sym- 
pathised with him, I questioned him in the hope of 
learning of some real atrocities. It was useless. Al- 
though he made general charges against the Russians, 
he always reverted, when pinned down to facts, with a 
fresh burst of anger, to the castle and church of Labiau 
as his pet atrocity. 

The orderly had just been commanded to take me on 
a search "for quarters for the night, when an automobile 
horn tooted beneath the window. Heavy steps on the 
stairs ; a Staff Officer entered the room, looked surprised 
to see me, and asked who I was. The Commandant 
justified his permission to let me remain by eulogising 
the noble work upon which I was engaged, but though 
the Staff Officer's objections were hushed, he did not 
enthuse over my coming. 

With intent to convince him that I was already hard 
at work I told him of the terrible destruction of the 
castle and church at Labiau, which I would visit on the 
following day. 

"I have a sergeant below who was there, and I will 
have him cojne in," he said. 

The sergeant entered, clicked his heels at attention; 
a doughty old warrior, small and wiry, not a civilian 
thrust into field-grey, but a soldier, every inch of him, 
a Prussian soldier, turned to stone in the presence of 
his superior officers, his sharp clear eyes strained on 
some point in space directly ahead. He might 
have stepped out of the pages of the Seven Years' 
War. 

IsTobody spoke. The pale yellow light of the oil lamp 
on the Commandant's desk fell on the military faces, 



THE LIE ON THE FILM 67 

figures and trappings of the men in tlie room. The 
shuffling tramp of soldiers in the dark street below died 
awaj in the direction of the river. I felt the military- 
tenseness of the scene. I realised that I was inside the 
German lines on a bluff that was succeeding but might 
collapse at any moment. 

Feeling that a good investigating committee should 
display initiative I broke the silence by questioning the 
little sergeant, and I began on a line which I felt would 
please the Commandant. "You were at Labiau during 
the fighting?" I asked. 

"I was, sir !" 

He did not move a muscle except those necessary 
for speech. His eyes were still rigid on that invisible 
something directly ahead. He clearly was conscious of 
the importance of his position as informant to a stranger 
before his superior officers. 

"I have heard that the beautiful old castle and the 
magnificent old church were destroyed," I continued. 

"You know of this, of course ?" 

"Ja, ja, that is true! Our wonderful artillery 
knocked them to pieces when we drove the Russians out 
in panic!" 

The sergeant was not the only one looking into 
space now. The Staff Officer relieved the situation by 
dismissing him from the room, whereupon the Com- 
mandant sharply bade the orderly conduct me to my 
night lodgings. 

"No Iron Cross for the little sergeant," I reflected, 
as we stumbled through the cooked old streets in the 
dark. Is it any wonder that the German Government 
insists that neutral correspondents be chaperoned by 



68 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

someone who can skilfully show them what is proper 
for them to see, and let them hear that which is proper 
for them to hear? 

Everywhere in rooms lighted by oil lamps soldiers sat 
talking, drinking and playing cards. They were under 
every roof, and were also bivouacked on the flats along 
the river. In all three inns there was not even floor 
space available. The little brick town hall, too, was 
crowded with soldiers. 

At the pontoon bridge we were sharply challenged by 
a sentry. The orderly answered and we passed on to 
a crowded beer hall above which I was fortunate to 
secure a room. By the flickering light of a candle I was 
conducted to a dusty attic furnished with ferruginous 
junk in one corner and a dilapidated bed in another. 
ISTo such luxuries as bed clothing, of course ; only a red 
mattress which had not been benefited in the least by 
Russian bayonet thrusts and sabre slashes in the quest 
of concealed treasure. I could not wash unless I would 
go down to the river, for with the blowing up of the 
bridges the water mains had also been destroyed. The 
excellent organisation' of the Germans was in evidence, 
however, for during my stay I witnessed their prompt 
and efficient measures to restore sanitation in order to 
avert disease. 

I went downstairs and entered the large beer room, 
hazy with tobacco smoke, and filled for the most part 
with non-commissioned officers. They, like everybody 
else in the room, seemed to have heard of my arrival. 
I joined a group at a long table, a jovial crowd of men 
who chaffed good naturedly one of their number who 
said he wished to be home with his wife and little ones. 



THE LIE ON THE FILM 69 

They looked at me and laughed, then pointing at him 
said, "He is no warrior !" 

But it was their talk about the Russians which in- 
terested me most. There was no hate in their speech, 
only indifference and contempt for their Eastern enemy. 
Hindenburg was their hero, and they drank toast after 
toast to his health. The Eussian menace was over, they 
felt; Britain and France would be easily smashed. 
They loved their Army, their Emperor, and Hinden- 
burg, and believed implicitly in all three. 

They sang a song of East Prussia and raised their 
foaming glasses at the last two lines : 

"Es trinkt der Mensch, es sduft das Pferd, 
In Ostpreussen ist das umgehehrt." 

While they were singing a man in civilian clothes en- 
tered, approached me with an air of authority, and an- 
nounced in a loud tone of voice that he had heard that 
I had said that I had come to East Prussia in search of 
Russian atrocities. 

"My name is Ourtin," I began, introducing myself, 
although I felt somewhat uneasy. 

"Thomas !" was. all he said. 

"Good Heavens!" I thought. "Is this man looking 
for me ? Am I in for serious trouble now ?" 

Instead, however, of Thomas being an interrogation 
as to my first name, it was his simple introduction of 
himself — a strange coincidence. 

Although he was addressing his remarks to me, he 
exclaimed in a tone which could be heard all over the 
room that he was Chief of Police during the Russian 
occupation of Welilau for three weeks, and took great 
pride in asserting that he was the man who could tell 



70 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

me all that I wished to know. He was highly elated 
because the Russians had employed him, given him a 
whistle and invested him with authority to summon aid 
if he detected any wrong-doing. They had further- 
more paid him for his services. Although he now 
roundly tongue-lashed them in general terms, there was 
no definite personal accusation that he could make 
against them. 

He told me of a sergeant who went into a house, 
ordered a meal and then demanded money, threatening 
the woman who had served him. A lieutenant entered 
at this moment, learned the particulars of the alterca- 
tion, and struck the sergeant, whom he reproved for dis- 
obeying commands for good conduct which had come 
from Headquarters. "Just think of such lack of respect 
among oflBcers," Thomas concluded. "One officer strik- 
ing another for something done against a person in an 
enemy country. That is bad for discipline. Such a 
thing would never happen in the German Army." 

The moral of the story as I saw it was quite different 
from what he had intended it to be. 

A few days later I was again in the crowded beer hall 
when Herr Thomas entered. He liked to be in the lime- 
light, and had a most extraordinary manner of appar- 
ently addressing his conversation to some selected indi- 
vidual, but carried it on in a tone which could be heard 
throughout the entire room. The Russian whistle which 
he still wore, and of which he was very proud, threat- 
ened to become a millstone about his neck, for return- 
ing refugees were accusing him of inefficiency during 
his reign, since they asserted that the Russians had 
stolen their goods from under his very nose. 



THE LIE ON THE FILM 71 

After he had hurled the usual invectives against the 
invaders for my benefit, two splendid looking officers, 
captain and lieutenant, both perfect gentlemen, said 
that they hoped that I would not become so saturated 
with this talk that I would write unfairly about the Rus- 
sians. They added that they had been impressed by the 
Eussian officers in that region and the control which 
they had exercised over their men. 

Early next morning I met the big man with the black 
beard who was either on my trail or had encountered me 
again by chance. When I said that I was going to Al- 
lenburg, of the destruction of which I had heard so 
much, he practically insisted that I go with him in his 
carriage. A mysterious stranger in brown was with 
him, who also assisted in the sight-seeing. 

We road through a gently undulating farming and 
grazing country to the AUe River, where we boarded 
a little Government tug which threaded its way through 
dead cows, horses, pigs, dogs, and now and then a man 
floating down the stream. Battered trenches, ruined 
farmhouses, splintered woods, the hoof marks of Rus- 
sian horses that had forded the stream under German 
fire, showed that the struggle had been intense along the 
river. The plan of battle formed in my mind. It was 
clear that the Germans had made the western bank a 
main line of defence, which, however, had been broken 
through. 

"Just wait until we reach Allenburg," said the man 
in brown, "and you will see what beasts the murdering 
Russians are. Wait until you see how they have 
destroyed that innocent town !" 

According to the course of the battle and the story 



72 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

of the Russian destruction of Allenburg, I expected to 
find it on the western bank, but to my great surprise it 
is on the eastern, with a considerable stretch of road 
separating it from the river. We left the boat and 
walked along this road, on each side of which lay wil- 
lows in perfect rows where they had been skilfully felled 
by the Russians. This sight evoked new assaults from 
my guides upon "tjie beasts" whom they accused of 
Avanton and wilful violation of the arboreal beauty 
which the Allenburgers had loved. 

I put myself in the place of the citizens of Allenburg, 
returning to their little town devastated by war; I un- 
derstood their feelings and I sympathised with them. 
I was seeing the other side of Germany's page of con- 
quest. The war map of Europe shows that she has done 
most of the invading, and during all the days I spent in 
the Fatherland I never heard a single word of pity for 
the people of the regions overrun by her armies — ex- 
cept, of course, the Pecksniffian variety used by her dip- 
lomats. It was now any rare privilege to return with 
German refugees to their ruined country, and they vied 
with one another when they talked to me in the presence 
of my guides in accusing the Russians of every crime 
under the sun. The war had been brought home to 
them, but in the meantime other Germans had brought 
the war home even more forcibly to the citizens of Bel- 
gium and northern France, but the thing could not 
balance in the minds of those affected. 

I was conducted to a combination home and chem- 
ist's shop, the upper part of which had been wrecked 
by a shell. The Russians had looted the place of chem- 
icals and had searched through all the letters in the 



THE LIE ON THE FILM 73 

owner's desk. These they had thrown upon the floor 
instead of putting them back neatly in the drawers. 

My guides laid great stress on such crimes, but I took 
mental note of certain other things which were not 
pointed out to me. The beasts — as they always called 
them — had been quartered here for three weeks, but not 
a mirror had been cracked, not a scratch marred the 
highly polished black piano, and the well-stocked, ex- 
quisitely carved bookcase was precisely as it had been 
before the first Cossack patrol entered the city. 

The owner viewed his loss philosophically. "When 
we have placed a war indemnity upon Russia I shall 
be paid in full," he declared in a voice of supreme con- 
fidence. 

My guides never gave me an opportunity to talk alone 
with the few civilians in the place, and at the sausage 
and beer lunch the conversation was based on the "wan- 
ton destruction by the beasts of an innocent town." 

After they had drunk so much beer that they both 
fell asleep I slipped quietly away and went about amid 
the ruins. I came upon human bodies burned to a crisp. 
Heaps of empty cartridge shells littered the ground, 
which I examined with astonishment for they were Rus- 
sian, not German, shells, and must have been used by 
men defending the town. 

I met a pretty girl of seventeen drawing water at a 
well, who had remained during the three weeks that the 
Russians were there to care for her invalid father, and 
had not suffered the slightest insult. Yet all my in- 
formants had told me that the Russians had spared none 
of the weaker sex who had remained in their path. 

Further investigations had revealed that the Russians 



74 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

had not fired a shot upon the town, but that the Ger- 
mans had destroyed it driving them out. 

I entered a little Roman Catholic church in the un- 
damaged section of the town and noted with interest 
that nothing had apparently been disturbed — this the 
more significant since the Russians hold a different 
faith. 

I walked back towards the river and strolled through 
the neat, well-shaded churchyard to the ruins of the 
large church, the dominating feature of the town. It 
was clear from what was left that the lines of the body 
and the spire had been of rare beauty for such an in- 
significant place as Allenburg. 

"Too bad!" I remarked to a white-haired old man 
who was sitting on a bench mournfully contemplating 
the ruins. 

"Sad, so sad !" he said in a voice full of grief. "And 
it seems sadder that it had to be done by our own 
people," he added. 

"Were you here during the fighting ?" I asked. 

"I was," he answered. "I would rather die than 
leave this place, where I was born and where I have 
always lived." 

I returned to the anxious guides and told them that 
I had visited the ruins of the church. 

"A destruction which could serve no military pur- 
pose," declared the man in brown. "You see the 
methods of the people Germany is fighting." 

I expressed a desire to seek only one more thing, the 
church on the road to Friedland which had been de- 
stroyed by the Russians after the sixty maidens had 



THE LIE ON THE FILM 75 

been driven into it. We went to it, but, alas ! it had not 
been disturbed in the least. I somehow felt that my 
guides saw the lack of destruction with genuine regret. 
The big man with the black beard was at a loss to recon- 
cile the story he told me at Konigsberg with the actual 
facts found on the spot. 

"Somebody must have made a mistake," was all he 
said. 

My last view of Allenburg was from across the river 
with the long rays of the setting sun burnishing the 
ruins of the once beautiful church, the church I saw 
months later on the screen in the London display room, 
the church that has been shown all over the world as 
evidence of Russian methods in war. 

I went all through East Prussia studying first hand 
the effects of the great campaign. My luck increased 
from day to day. I secured a military pass to visit all 
hospitals in the XXth Army Corps, which aided my 
investigations not a little. The prejudice which I had 
against the Russians died in East Prussia. It was 
buried forever the following winter when I was with 
the Russian Army in the memorable retreat through 
the Bukowina. In East Prussia I was in an entirely 
different position from a man investigating conditions 
in .Belgium, for I was in the German's own country 
after he had driven out the invader. I tried to see 
some youth whose hand had been cut off, but could not 
find a single case, although everybody had heard of 
such mutilations. The fact that no doctor whom I ques- 
tioned knew of any case was sufficient refutation, since 
a person whose hand had been cut off would need some- 
thing more than a bandage tied on at home. 



76 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

When the Russians entered the province they struck 
yellow and black posters everywhere announcing that 
it was annexed to Russia. In view of this the Russian 
officers were instructed to restrain their men and to 
treat the natives well. Isolated cases of violence, for 
the most part murder and robbery of the victim, had 
occurred where men had broken away from restraint, 
but they were surprisingly few. 

After I returned to Berlin I met an American corre- 
spondent who was in East Prussia when I was. His 
sympathies were pro-German, but he was an open and 
fair-minded man, Avho, like me, had left Berlin with a 
deep feeling against the Russians, thanks to the excel- 
lent German . propaganda. "I went especially to get 
some good stories of Russian atrocities," he said. "I 
thought that every mile would be blood-marked with 
evidence, but I came back defeated. Some petty lar- 
ceny and robbery, a Red Cross flag torn to shreds by a 
Russian shell, two old men murdered and robbed by 
Cossacks, and a woman in the hospital at Soldau, who 
had been outraged by five Cossacks, was all that I could 
find, even though I was aided by the German Govern- 
ment." 

My own first-hand investigations convinced me that 
it would be difficult for any army in the world to con- 
duct a cleaner campaign than Russia conducted in her 
first invasion of East Prussia. I remind the reader 
that I am speaking of the first invasion, for I have no 
personal knowledge of the second. Subsequently in 
Germany when I spoke of the matter I was always told 
that it was the second invasion which was so bad. Per- 
haps! But I had been fooled when Berlin cried wolf 
the first time. 



THE LIE ON THE FILM 77 

Bj a stroke of fortune while in East Prussia I be- 
came "assistant" for two days to a Government mov- 
ing picture photographer who had a pass for himself 
and assistant in those happy days of inexactitude. We 
formed the kind of close comradeship which men form 
who are suffocated but unhurt by a shell which kills and 
maims others all about them. That had been our ex- 
perience. He had, moreover, been over much of the 
ground covered by me behind the front. 

"I am instructed to get four kinds of pictures," he 
explained. "(1) Pictures which show German patriot- 
ism and unity. (2) Pictures which show German or- 
ganisation and efficiency. (3) Pictures which show 
evidence of humanity in the German Army. (4) Pic- 
tures which show destruction by the enemy. Some of 
my pictures are kept by the Kriegsministerium for pur- 
poses of studying the war. The greater part, however, 
are used for propaganda both at home and abroad. 
Furthermore, I must be careful to keep an accurate rec- 
ord of what each picture is. The pictures are then ar- 
ranged and given suitable titles in Berlin." 

I thought of all this in the London display-room 
when the familiar picture of the ruined church flashed 
before my eyes with the title Beautiful Church at Al- 
lenburg Destroyed hy the Russians — a deliberate lie on 
the film. 

I have nothing to say against the Germans for knock- 
ing their own town to pieces or against the British and 
French for knocking French towns to pieces. That is 
one of the misfortunes of war. 

The point is, that the propaganda department of the 



78 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Wilhelmstrasse fully "understands that people wLio do 
not see the war, especially neutrals, are shocked at the 
destruction of churches. The Germans have been 
taught an unpleasant lesson in this in the case of 
Eheims. Therefore they answer by falsifying a film 
when it suits their purpose with just as little compunc- 
tion as they repudiate promises. 

"A little thing !" you might say. 

That adds to its importance, for it is attention to de- 
tail which characterises modern Germany. It is the 
subtle things which are diflScult to detect. The Gov- 
ernment neglects nothing which will aid in the owner- 
ship of public opinion at home and the influencing of 
neutrals throughout the world. 



CHAPTEK VII 

THE IDEA FACTORY 

AGEOTJP of diplomats and newspaper correspondents 
were gathered at lunch in a German city early in 
the war, when one of the latter, an American, asked how 
a certain proposition which was being discussed would 
suit public opinion. "Will public opinion favour such 
a move ?" he questioned. 

"Public opinion ! Public opinion !" a member of the 
German Foreign Office repeated in a tone which showed 
that he was honestly perplexed. "Why, we create it !" 

He spoke the truth. They certainly do. 

The State-controlled professor, parson and moving- 
picture producer appeal to limited audiences in halls 
and churches, but the newspaper is ubiquitous, particu- 
larly in a country where illiteracy is practically un- 
known, and where regulations bidding and forbidding 
are constantly appearing in the newspapers — the read- 
ing of which is thus absolutely necessary if one would 
avoid friction with the authorities. 

In a free Press, like that of the United States or 
Great Britain, the truth on any question of public in- 
terest is reasonably certain to come to light sooner or 
later. Competition is keen, and if one paper does not 
dig up and publish the facts, a rival is likely to do so. 
The German Press was gaining a limited degree of 
freedom before the war, but that has been wiped away. 

79 



8o THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

As in other belligerent countries news of a military na- 
ture must quite properly pass the censor. But in Ger- 
many, unlike Great Britain, for example, all other 
topics must be written in a manner to please the Gov- 
ernment, or trouble ensues for the writer and his paper. 
To a certain extent the Press is a little unmuzzled dur- 
ing the sittings of the Reichstag — ^not much, but some- 
what, for the reports of the Reichstag proceedings are 
strictly censored. The famous speech of Deputy Bauer 
in May, 1916, was a striking example, for not a word 
of his speech, the truth of which was not questioned, 
was allowed to appear in a single German newspaper. 
The suppression of most of Herr Hoffmann's speech in 
the Prussian Diet in January, 1917, is another impor- 
tant case in point. This is in striking contrast to the 
British Parliament, which is supreme, and over whose 
reports the Press Bureau has no control. The German 
Press Bureau, on the other hand, revises and even sup- 
presses the publication of speeches. When necessary, it 
specially transmits speeches by telegram and wireless to 
foreign countries if it thinks those speeches will help 
German propaganda. 

The Berlin and provincial editors are summoned 
from time to time to meetings, when they are addressed 
by members of the Government as to what it is wise 
for them to say and not to say. These meetings consti- 
tute a hint that if the editors are indiscreet, if they, 
for example, publish matter "calculated to promote dis- 
unity," they may be subject to the increasingly severe 
penalties now administered. If a newspaper shows a 
tendency to kick over the traces, a Government emissary 
waits upon the editor, calls his attention to any offend- 



THE IDEA FACTORY 8i 

ing article or paragraph, and suggests a correction. If 
a newspaper still offends, it is liable to a suspension for 
a day or even a week, or it may be suppressed alto- 
gether. 

But in peace, as well as in war, editors all over Ger- 
many were instructed as to the topic on which to lay 
accent for a limited period, and just how to treat that 
topic. Eor example, during the three months preceding 
the war, Russia was bitterly attacked in the German 
Press. From August 1 to August 4, 1914, the German 
people had it crammed down their throats that she was 
the sole cause of the war. On August 4 the Govern- 
ment marshalled the editors and professors and ordered 
them to throw all the responsibility on Britain, and the 
hate was switched from one to the other with the speed 
and ease of a stage electrician throwing the lever from 
red to blue. 

How do the editors like being mere clerks for the 
Government ? The limited numbers of editors of inde- 
pendent thought, such as the "relentless" Count Revent- 
low, Maximilian Harden, and Theodor Wolff, detest 
such a role, and struggle against it. After sincere and 
thorough investigation, however, I am convinced the 
average German editor or reporter, like the average pro- 
fessor, prefers to have his news handed to him to dig- 
ging it up for himself. 

In this connection the remark made to me by the 
editor of a little paper in East Prussia is interesting. 
After the Russians had fallen back he told me of two 
boys in a neighbouring village whose hands had been 
cut off. He said that he was going to run the story, and 
suggested that I also use it. I proposed that we make 



82 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

a little trip of investigation, as we could do so in a 
couple of hours. 

He looked surprised. "Why, we have the story al- 
ready," he declared. 

"But I am not going to write it unless I can prove 
it," I replied. 

A moment later I heard him sigh with despair as he 
half whispered to a cavalry captain: "Yes, yes, alas, 
over there the Press is in the hands of the people !" 

Many newspaper readers run more or less carelessly 
through articles, and many more simply read the head- 
lines and headings. The Official Press Bureau, for 
which no detail is too minute, realises this perfectly, 
with the result that German newspaper headings are 
constructed, less with a view to sensationalism, as in 
some British and American papers, or with a view to 
condense accurately the chief news feature of the day, 
as to impress the reader — or the hearer, since the head- 
lines are cried shrilly in Berlin and other cities — with 
the idea that Germany is always making progress to- 
wards ultimate victory. The daily reports of the Gen- 
eral Staff have been excellent, with a few notable ex- 
ceptions such as the Battle of the Marne and the Battle 
of the Somme. During reverses, however, they have 
shown a tendency to pack unpalatable truths in plenty 
of "shock absorber," with the result that the public 
mind, as I know from my personal investigations, is 
completely befogged as to the significance of military 
operations which did not go in a manner satisfactory to 
the German leaders. In all this the headline never 
failed to cheer. When the Russians were smashing the 
Austrians in the East, while the British and French 



THE IDEA FACTORY 83 

were making important gains and inflicting much more 
important losses on the Somme, the old reliable head- 
line — TEEEiBLE RUSsiAKT LOSSES — ^was uscd Until it was 
worn threadbare. 

What would you think, you who live in London or 
ISTew York, if you woke up some morning to find every 
newspaper in the city with the- same headlines? And 
would you not be surprised to learn that nearly every 
newspaper throughout your country had the same head- 
lines that day? You would conclude that there was 
wonderful central control somewhere, would you not? 

Yet that is what happens in Germany repeatedly. 
It is of special significance on "total days." Those are 
the days when the Government, in the absence of fresh 
victories, adds the totals of prisoners taken for a given 
period, and as only the totals appear in the headlines 
the casual reader feels nearer a victorious peace. On 
the morning of March 13, 1916, most of the papers had 
"total" headlines for Verdun. 

liJ"ot so the Tagehlatt. Theodor Wolff, its editor, has 
had so much journalistic experience, outside of Ger- 
many, and is, moreover, a man of such marked ability, 
that he is striving to be something more than a syco- 
phantic clerk of the Government. He is not a grumbler, 
not a dissatisfied extremist, not unpatriotic, but pos- 
sesses a breadth of outlook patriotic in the highest sense. 
On the morning after the Liebknecht riots in the Pots- 
damer Platz, his paper did not appear. The reason 
given by the Commandant of the Mark of Branden- 
burg was that he had threatened the Burgfriede by 
charging certain interests in Germany with attempting 
to make the war a profitable institution. But there are 



84 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

those who say that the police were very watchful in the 
newspaper offices that night, and that the Tagehlatt 
did not appear because of its attempt to print some of 
the happenings in the Potsdamer Platz. 

It has been the custom of Herr Wolff to write a front- 
page article every Monday morning signed T. W. On 
the last Monday morning in July, 1916, in a brilliantly 
written article, the first part of which patted the Gov- 
ernment on the back for some things, he delicately ex- 
pressed a desire for reform in diplomatic methods which 
would render war-making less easy. Then he added 
that if some statesman, such as Prince Biilow, had 
been called as adviser in July, 1914, a way to avert the 
war might have been found. 

This so angered the Government, which has success- 
fully convinced its great human sheep-fold that Ger- 
many is the innocent victim of attack, that the Tagehlatt 
was suppressed for nearly a week, and, like the ex- 
Socialist paper Vorwaerts, was permitted to reappear 
only after it promised "to be good." Theodor Wolff 
was personally silenced for several months. This was 
his greatest but not his only offence. All over Ger- 
many the people have been officially taught to regard 
this great war time as die grosse Zeit. Wolff, however, 
sarcastically set the expression in inverted commas — 
thereby committing a sacrilege against the State. 

Throughout Germany monuments have been reared 
and nails driven into emblems marked die grosse zeit. 
I have often wondered just what thoughts these monu- 
ments will arouse in the German's mind if his country 
is finally beaten and all his bloodshed and food depriva- 
tion will have been in vain. 



THE IDEA FACTORY 85 

The Press has, of course, been the chief instrument, 
reinforced by the schoolmaster, professor and parson, in 
spreading the doctrine of scientific hatred. It is not 
generally known that Deputy Cohn, speaking in the 
Reichstag on April 8, 1916, sharply criticised the 
method of interning British civilians at Ruhleben. He 
went on to say that, "reports of the persecutions of 
Germans in England were magnified and to some ex- 
tent invented by the German Press in order to stir up 
war feeling against England." 

I saw a brilliant example of the German Press 
Bureau's attention to details in the late autumn of 
1914. I was on a point of vantage half way up the 
Schlossberg behind Ereiburg during the first aerial at- 
tack by the Erench in that region. In broad daylight 
a solitary airman flew directly over the town and went 
on until he was directly over the extensive barracks just 
outside. Ereiburg is a compact city of 85,000 inhabi- 
tants, and it would have been easy to have caused dam- 
age, and probably loss of life to the civilian population. 
It was clear to me in my front-ro^v position and to the 
natives, with many of whom I afterwards discussed the 
matter, that the Erenchman was careful to avoid dam- 
aging the town, and circled directly over the barracks 
on which he dropped all his bombs. The Ereiburg 
papers said little about the raid, but to my surprise 
when I reached Erankfurt and Cologne a week later, 
newspaper notices were still stuck about the cities call- 
ing upon Germans to witness again the dastardly 
methods of the enemy who attack the inhabitants of 
peaceful towns outside of the zone of operations. 

The French very properly and effectively practised 



86 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

reprisals later, but the Germans believe that the shoe 
is on the other foot. And so it is in everything con- 
nected with the war. The Germans tell you that they 
use poisonous gas because the French used it; in fact, 
only their good luck in capturing some of the French 
gas generators enabled them to learn the method. 
Britain, not Germany, violates the laws of the sea. It 
was the Belgians who were cruel to German troops, 
especially the Belgian women and the Belgian children. 

When the Verdun offensive came to a standstill a 
spirit of restlessness developed which was reflected in 
the Reichstag, where a few Social Democrats attacked 
the Government because they believed that Germany 
could now make peace if she wished, and that further 
bloodshed would be for a war of conquest, advocated by 
the annexationists. 

During the succession of German military victories, 
especially in the first part of the war, there was plenty 
of "front copy" both as news and filler. Some of the 
accounts were excellent. The reader seldom got the 
idea, however, that German soldiers were being killed 
and wounded, and after a time most of the battle de- 
scriptions contained much of soft nocturnal breezes 
whispering in the moonlight, but precious few real live 
details of fighting. 

Regarding this point, a German of exceptional in- 
formation of the world outside his own country ex- 
pressed to me his utter amazement at the accounts ap- 
pearing in the British Press of the hard life in the 
trenches. "I don't see how they hope to get men to 
enlist when they write such discouraging stuff," he said. 

After the Battle of the Somme opened, the German 



THE IDEA FACTORY 87 

newspapers used to print extracts from the London 
papers in which British correspondents vividly described 
how their own men were mown down by German ma- 
chine-guns after they had passed them, so well was the 
enemy entrenched. On that occasion one of the manip- 
ulators of public opinion said to me, "The British 
Government is mad to permit such descriptions to ap- 
pear in the Press. They will have only themselves to 
blame if their soldiers soon refuse to fight !" 

This is one of the many instances which I shall cite 
throughout this book to show that because the German 
authorities know other countries they do not neces- 
sarily know other subjects. 

As weeks of war became months and months became 
years, the censorship screws were twisted tighter than 
ever, with the result that docile editors were often at 
their wits' end to provide even filler. 
.- On July 14, for example, with battles of colossal 
magnitude raging east and west, the Berliner Morgen- 
post found news so scarce that it had to devote most of 
the front page to the review of a book called "Paris and 
the French Front," by ISTils Christiernssen, a Swedish 
writer. I had read the book months before, as the Pro- 
paganda Department of the Foreign Office had sent it 
to all foreign correspondents. 

It became noticeable, however, that as food portions 
diminished, soothing-syrup doses for the public in- 
creased. Whenever a wave of complaints over food 
shortage began to rise the Press would build a dyke of 
accounts of the trials of meatless days in Russia, of 
England's scarcity of things to eat, and of the dread 
in France of another winter. The professors writing 



8 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

in the Press grew particularly comforting. Thus on 
June 30 one of them comforted the public in a lengthy 
and serious article in the evening edition of the Vos- 
sische Zeitung with "the revelation that over-eating ia 
a cause of baldness." 

The cheering news of enemy privations continued to 
such an extent that many Americans were asked by 
the more credulous if there were bread-tickets in New 
York and other American cities. In short, Germany is 
being run on the principle that when you are down with 
small-pox it is comforting to know that your neighbour 
has cholera. 

The key-note of the German Press, however, has been 
to show that the war was forced on peace-loving Ger- 
many. Of the Government's success in its propaganda 
among its own people I saw evidence every day. The 
people go even one step farther than the Government, 
for the Government sought merely to show that it was 
forced to declare war upon Russia and France. Most 
of the German people are labouring under the delusion 
that Russia and France actually declared war on Ger- 
many. This misconception, no doubt, is partly due to 
the accounts in the German papers during the first days 
of August, 1914, describing how the Russians and 
French crossed the frontier to attack Germany before 
any declaration of war. 

A German girl who was in England at the outbreak 
of war, and who subsequently returned to her own coun- 
try, asked her obstinate, hard-headed Saxon uncle, a 
wealthy manufacturer, if Germany did not declare war 
on Russia and France. She insisted that Germany did, 
for she had become convinced not only in England but 



THE IDEA FACTORY 89 

in Holland. Her nnele, in a rage, dismissed the mat- 
ter with: Du hist falsch unterrichtet. (You are falsely 
informed.) 

An American in Berlin had a clause in his apartment 
lease that his obligations were abruptly and automati- 
cally terminated should Germany be in a state of war. 
Yet when he wished to pack up and go his German 
landlord took the case to court on the ground that Ger- 
many had not declared war. 

The hypnotic effect of the German newspapers on the 
German is not apprehended either in Great Britain or 
in the United States. Those papers, all directed from 
the Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrasse, can manipu- 
late the thoughts of these docile people, and turn their 
attention to any particular part of the war with the 
same celerity as the operator of a searchlight can direct 
his beam at any part of the sky he chooses. For the 
moment the whole German nation looks at that beam 
and at nothing else. 

In the late afternoon of an autumnal day I stopped 
at a little wayside inn near Hildesheim. The place 
had an empty look, and the woman who came in at the 
sound of my footsteps bore unmistakable lines of trouble 
and anxiety. 

'No meat that day, no cheese either, except for the 
household. She could not even give me bread without 
a bread-ticket — ^nothing but diluted beer. 

Before the war business had been good. Then came 
one misfortune after another. Her husband was a 
prisoner in Russia, and her eldest son had died with 
von Kluck's Army almost in sight of the Eiffel Tower. 



90 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

"You must find it hard to get along," I said. 

"I do," she sighed. "But, then, when fodder got 
scarce we killed all the pigs, so bother with them is over 
now." 

"You are not downhearted about the war ?" I asked. 

"I know that Germany cannot be defeated," she re- 
plied. "But we do so long for peace." 

"You do not think your Government responsible at 
all for the war ?" I ventured. 

"I don't, and the rest of us do not," was her unhesi- 
tating reply. "We all know that our Kaiser wanted 
only peace. Everybody knows that England caused all 
this misery." Then she looked squarely and honestly 
into my eyes and said in a tone I shall never forget: 
"Do you think that if our Government were responsible 
for the war that we should be willing to bear all these 
terrible sacrifices?" 

I thought of that banquet table more than two years 
before, and the remark about creating public opinion. 
I realised that the road is long which winds from it to 
the little wayside inn near Hildesheim, but that it is a 
road on which live both the diplomat and the lonely, 
war-weary woman. They live on different ends, that 
is all. 



CHAPTEE VIII 

COREESPONDENTS IN SHACKLES 

TOWARDS the end of 1915 the neutral newspaper 
correspondents in Berlin were summoned to the 
Kriegs-Presse-Bureau (War Press Bureau) of the 
Great General Staff. The official in charge, Major 
Nicolai, notified them that the German Government 
desired their signature to an agreement respecting their 
future activities in the war. It had been decided, Major 
Mcolai stated, to allow the American journalists to 
visit the German fronts at more or less regular inter- 
vals, but before this was done it would be necessary for 
them to enter into certain pledges. These were, 
mainly : — 

1. To remain in Germany for the duration of the 

war, unless given special permission to leave by 
the German authorities. 

2. To guarantee that dispatches would be published 

in the United States precisely as sent from Ger- 
many, that is to say, as edited and passed by the 
onilitary censorship. 

3. To supply their own headlines for their dispatches, 

and to guarantee that these, and none others, 
would be printed. 

After labouring in vain to instruct Major Nicolai 
that with the best of intentions on the part of the corre- 
spondents it was beyond their power to say in exactly 

91 



92 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

•what form the Omaha Bee or the New Orleans Picayune 
would publish their "copy," they affixed their signatures 
to the weird document laid before them. It was signed, 
without exception, by all the important correspondents 
permanently stationed in Berlin. Two or three who did 
not desire to hand over the control of their personal 
movements to the German Government for an unlimited 
number of years did not "take the pledge," with the re- 
sult that they were not invited to join the personally 
conducted junkets to the fronts which were subsequently 
organised. 

N^othing that has happened in Germany during the 
war illustrates so well the vassalage to which neutral 
correspondents have been reduced as the humiliating 
pledges extorted from them by the German Govern- 
ment as the price of their remaining in Berlin for the 
practice of their profession. 

It was undoubtedly this episode which inspired the 
American Ambassador, Mr. Gerard, to tell the Ameri- 
can correspondents last summer that they would do well 
to obtain their freedom from the German censorship 
before invoking the Embassy's good offices to break 
down the alleged interference with their dispatches by 
the British censorship. When the Germans learned of 
the rebuff which Mr. Gerard had administered to his 
journalistic compatriots, the Berlin Press launched one 
of those violent attacks against the Ambassador to 
which he has constantly been subject in Germany dur- 
ing the war. 

As I have shown in a previous chapter the German 
Government attaches so much importance to the control 
and manufacture of public opinion through the Press 



CORRESPONDENTS IN SHACKLES 93 

that it is drastic in the regulation of German news- 
papers. It is therefore comprehensible that it should 
strive to enlist to the fullest possible extent the Press of 
other countries. At least one paper in practically every 
neutral country is directly subsidised by the German 
Foreign Office, which does not, however, stop at this. 
The attempt to seduce the newspapers of other nations 
into interpreting the Fatherland as the Wilhelmstrasse 
wishes it to be interpreted leads the investigators to a 
subterranean labyrinth of schemes which would fill a 
volume. 

Archduke Pranz Ferdinand was assassinated on 
June 28, 1914. Long before that Dr. Hammann, head 
of the Nachrichtendienst of the German Foreign Office, 
had organised a plan for the successful influencing of 
the Press of the world. In May, 1914, the work of a 
special bureau under his direction and presided over by 
a woman of international reputation was in full opera- 
tion. 

The following incident, which is one of the many I 
might cite, throws interesting light on one method of 
procedure. The head of the special bureau asked one 
of the best known woman newspaper reporters of ITor- 
way if she would like to do some easy work which 
would take up very little of her time and for which she 
would be well paid. 

The ISTorwegian reporter was interested and asked for 
particulars. 

"Germany wishes to educate other countries to a true 
appreciation of things German. Within a year, or at 
most within two years, we shall be doing this by send- 
ing to foreign newspapers articles which will instruct 



94 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

the world about Germany. Of course, it is not advis- 
able to send them directly from our own bureau; it is 
much better to have them appear to come from the 
correspondents of the various foreign newspapers. 
Thus, we shall send you articles which you need only 
copy or translate and sign." 

This has been the practice in German journalism for 
years, and its extension to other countries was merely a 
chain in the link of Germany's deliberate and thorough 
preparations for the war. 

With a few exceptions, German reporters and corre- 
spondents are underpaid sycophants, mere putty in the 
hands of the Government. Therefore, the chagrin of 
the officials over the independence and ability of the 
majority of the American correspondents is easy to un- 
derstand. The Wilhelmstrasse determined to control 
them, and through them to influence the American 
Press. Hence the rules given above. 

When a man signs an agreement that he will not 
leave Germany until the end of the war, without special 
dispensation, he has bound himself to earn his liveli- 
hood in that country. He cannot do this without the 
consent of the Government, for if he does not write in 
a manner to please them they can slash his copy, de- 
lay it, and prevent him from going on trips to such an 
extent that he will be a failure with his newspaper at 
home. His whole success depends therefore upon his 
being "good" much after the manner in which a Ger- 
man editor must be "good." If he expresses a wish to 
leave Germany before the end of the war and the wish 
is granted, he feels that a great favour has been con- 
ferred upon him and he is supposed to feel himself 



CORRESPONDENTS IN SHACKLES 95 

morally bound to be "good" to Germany in the future. 

The American journalistic colony in Germany is an 
entirely different thing from what it used to be in pre- 
war days. Before 1914 it consisted merely of the rep- 
resentatives of the Associated Press and United Press, 
half a dozen ISFew York papers (including the notorious 
New-Yorher Staats-Zeitung), and the well-known and 
important Western journal, the Chicago Daily News. 
To-day many papers published in the United States are 
represented in Berlin by special correspondents. The 
influx of newcomers has been mostly from German-lan- 
guage papers, printed in such Teutonic centres as Chi- 
cago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee, etc. Journals 
like the IlUnoiser Staats-zeitung , of Chicago, which for 
years past has barely been able to keep its head above 
water, have suddenly found themselves affluent enough 
to maintain correspondents in Europe who, for their 
part, scorn lodgings less pretentious than those of the 
de luxe Hotel Adlon in Unter den Linden. 

The bright star in the American journalistic firma- 
ment in Berlin is Karl Heinrich von Wiegand, the spe- 
cial representative of the New York World. The New 
Yorh World is not pro-German, but von Wiegand is of 
direct and noble German origin. Apart from his ad- 
mitted talents as a newspaper man, his Prussian "von" 
is of no inconsiderable value to any newspaper which 
employs him. Von Wiegand, I believe, is a native of 
California. Persons unfriendly to him assert that he is 
really a native of Prussia, who went to the United 
States when a child. Wherever he was born, he is now 
typically American, and speaks German with an unmis- 
takable Transatlantic Accent. He is a bookseller by 



96 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

origin, and his little shop in San Francisco was wiped 
out by the earthquake. About forty-five years of age, 
he is a man of medium build, conspicuously near- 
sighted, wears inordinately thick "Teddy Roosevelt eye- 
glasses," and is in his whole bearing a "real" Westerner 
of unusually affable personality. Von Wiegand 
claims, when taunted with being a Press agent of the 
German Government, that he is nothing but an enter- 
prising correspondent of the New York World. I did 
not find this opinion of himself fully shared in Ger- 
many. There are many people who will tell you that if 
von Wiegand is not an actual attache of the German 
Press Bureau, his "enterprise" almost always takes the 
form of very effective Press agent work for the Kaiser's 
cause. He certainly comes and goes at all official head- 
quarters in Germany on terms of welcome and intimacy, 
and is a close friend of the notorious Count Reventlow. 

My personal opinion, however, is that he is above all 
a journalist, and an exceedingly able one. 

Von Wiegand's liaison with the powers that be in 
Berlin has long been a standing joke among his Ameri- 
can colleagues. Shortly after the fall of Warsaw in 
August, 1915, when the stage in Poland was set for 
exhibition to the neutral world, he was roused from his 
slumbers in his suite at the Adlon by a midnight tele- 
phone message, apprising him that if he would be at 
Friedrichstrasse Station at 4.30 the next morning, with 
packed bags, he would be the only correspondent to be 
taken on a staff trip to Warsaw. Wiegand was there 
at the appointed hour, but was astonished to discover 
that he had been hoaxed. The perpetrators of the "rag" 
were some of his TJ. S. confreres. 



CORRESPONDENTS IN SHACKLES 97 

Yon Wiegand for nearly two years lias been the re- 
cipient of such marked and exclusive favours in Berlin 
that Mr. Hearst's New YorJc American (the chief rival 
of the New York World, and the head of the "Interna- 
tional l^ews Service" which has been suppressed in 
Great Britain, where it has been proved to have ma- 
liciously lied on divers occasions) decided to send to 
Germany a special correspondent who would also have 
a place in the sun. The gentleman appointed to crowd 
Mr. von Wiegand out of the limelight was a former 
clergyman named Dr. William Bayard Hale, a gifted 
writer and speaker, who obtained some international 
notoriety eight years ago by interviewing the Kaiser. 
That interview was so full of blazing political indis- 
cretions that the German Government suppressed it at 
great cost by buying up the entire issue of the ]^ew 
York magazine in which the explosion was about to 
take place. Enough of the contents of the interview 
subsequently leaked out to indicate that its main fea- 
ture was the German Emperor's insane animosity to 
Great Britain and Japan and his determination to go 
to war with them. 

Dr. Hale also enjoyed the prestige of having once 
been an intimate of President Wilson. He had written 
the latter's biography, and later represented him in 
Mexico as a special emissary. Shortly before the war 
he married a ISTew York German woman, who is, I be- 
lieve, a sister or near relative of Herr Muschenheim, 
the owner of the Hotel Astor, which in 1914 and 1915 
was inhabited by the German propaganda bureau, or 
one of the many bureaus maintained in ITew York City. 
Erom the date of his German matrimonial alliance Dr. 



98 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Hale became an ardent protagonist of Kultur. One of 
his last activities before going to Germany was to edit 
a huge "yellow book" which summarised "Great 
Britain's violations of international law" and the acri- 
monious correspondence on contraband and shipping 
controversies between the British and American Gov- 
ernments. This publication was financed by the German 
publicity organisation and widely circulated in the 
United States and all neutral countries. 

Dr. Hale, a tall, dark, keen-looking, smooth-shaven, 
and smooth-spoken American, received in Berlin on his 
arrival a welcome customarily extended only to a new- 
coming foreign Ambassador. He came, of course, pro- 
vided with the warmest credentials Count Bernstorff 
could supply. Long before Hale had a chance to pre- 
sent himself at the Foreign Ofiice, the Foreign Office 
presented itself to him, an emissary from the Imperial 
Chancellor having, according to the story current in 
Berlin, left his compliments at Dr. Hale's hotel. He 
had not been in Berlin many days before an interview 
with Bethmann-Hollweg was handed to him on a silver 
plate. Forthwith the New YorTc American began to be 
deluged with the journalistic sweetmeats — Ministerial 
interviews. Departmental statements, and exclusive 
news tit-bits — ^with which Karl Heinrich von Wiegand 
had so long and alone been distinguishing himself. 

I have told in detail these facts about von Wiegand 
and Hale because between them the two men are able 
to flood the American public with a torrent of German- 
made news and views, whose volume and influence are 
tremendous. The New York World's European news 
is "syndicated" to scores of newspapers throughout the 



CORRESPONDENTS IN SHACKLES 99 

American continent, and the service has "featured" 
von Wiegand's Berlin dispatches to the exclusion, or at 
least almost to the eclipse, of the World's other vrar 
news. Hale's dispatches to the Hearst Press have been 
published all the way across the Eepublic, not only in 
the dailies of vast circulation owned by Mr. Hearst in 
!N"ew York, Boston, Chicago, San Prancisco, Los An- 
geles, and elsewhere, but also in a great many other 
papers like the prominent Philadelphia North Ameri- 
can, which subscribed to the "International !N^ews Ser- 
vice." 

The German authorities understand all this perfectly 
well. That explains their unceasing attentions to von 
Wiegand and Hale, and to other valuable correspon- 
dents. One of these recently undertook to compile a 
book on Belgium in war-time for the purpose of white- 
washing Germans in American estimation. Accom- 
panied by his wife, he was motored and wined and 
dined through the conquered country under the watch- 
ful chaperonage of German officers. He has returned 
to Berlin to write his book, although it is com- 
mon knowledge there that during his entire stay in 
Belgium he was not permitted to talk to a single 
Belgian. 

Although nominally catered to and fawned upon by 
the German authorities, the American correspondents 
cut on the whole a humiliating figure, although not all 
of them realise it. It is notorious they are spied upon 
day and night. They are even at times ruthlessly 
scorned by their benefactors in the Wilhelmstrasse. 
One of the Americans who essays to be independent, 
was some time ago a member of a journalistic party 



lOo THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

conducted to Lille. He left the party long enough to 
stroll into a jeweller's shop to purchase a new glass for 
his watch. While making the purchase he asked the 
Frenchman who waited on him how he liked the Ger- 
mans. "They are very harsh, but just," was the reply. 
A couple of weeks later, when the correspondents were 
back in Berlin, Major ISTicolai, of the War Press 
Bureau, sent for the correspondent, said to him that he 
knew of the occasion on which the American journalist 
had "left the party" in Lille, and demanded to know 
what had occurred in the watchmaker's shop. The 
correspondent repeated precisely what the Frenchman 
had said. "Well," snarled Major ITicolai, "why didn't 
you send that to your papers?" I may mention here 
that these parties of neutral correspondents are herded 
rather than conducted when on tour. 

The American correspondents had a sample of the 
actual contempt in which the German authorities hold 
them on the day when the commercial submarine 
Deutschland returned to Bremen, August 23. For pur- 
poses of glorifying the Deutschland' s achievement in 
the United States, the American correspondents in Ber- 
lin were dispatched to Bremen, where they were told 
that elaborate special arrangements for their reception 
and entertainment had been completed. Count Zeppelin, 
two airship commanders, who had just raided England, 
and a number of other national heroes would be pres- 
ent, together with the Grand Duke of Oldenburg at the 
head of a galaxy of civil, military, and naval digni- 
taries. The grand climax of the Deutschland joy car- 
nival was to be a magnificent banquet with plenty of 
that rare luxury, bread and butter, at the famous 



CORRESPONDENTS IN SHACKLES loi 

Bremen Bathaus accompanied by both oratorical and 
pjrotechnical fireworks. The correspondents were 
given an opportunity to watch the triumphal progess 
of the Deutschland through the Weser into Bremen har- 
bour, but at night, when they looked for their places at 
the Bathaus feast, they were informed that there was 
no room for them. An overflow banquet had been ar- 
ranged in their special honour in a neighbouring tav- 
ern. This was too much even for some of the War 
Press Bureau's best American friends, and the overflow 
dinner party was served at a table which contained 
many vacant chairs. Their intended occupiers had 
taken the first train back to Berlin, thoroughly dis- 
gusted. 

It is fair to say that several of the principal Amer- 
ican correspondents in Berlin are making a serious ef- 
fort to practise independent journalism, hut it is a diffi- 
cult and hopeless struggle. They are shackled and con- 
trolled from one end of the week to the other. They 
could not if they wished send the unadorned truth to 
the United States. All they are permitted to report is 
that portion of the truth luhich reflects Germany in the 
light in which it is useful for Germany to appear from 
time to time. 

Germany has organised news for neutrals in the most 
intricate fashion. A certain kind of news is doled out 
for the United States, a totally different kind for Spain, 
and still a different brand, when emergency demands, 
for Switzerland, Brazil, or China. There is a Chinese 
correspondent among the other "neutrals" in Germany. 
The "news" prepared for him by Major Mcolai's de- 
partment would be very amusing reading in the col- 



I02 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

umns of Mr. von Wiegand's or Dr. Hale's papers. 
There is a celebrated and pro-Ally newspaper in I^ew 
York whose motto is "All the news that's fit to print." 
The motto of the German War Press Bureau is "All the 
news that's safe to print." 



CHAPTEK IX 

ANTON LANG OF OBERAMMEEGATT 

WHILE I was at home on a few weeks' visit in Oc- 
tober, 1915, I read in the newspapers a simple 
announcement cabled from Europe that Anton Lang of 
Oberammergau had been killed in the great French of- 
fensive in Champagne. This came as a shock to many 
Americans, for the name of this wonderful character 
who had inspired people of all shades of opinion and 
religious belief in his masterful impersonation of Christ 
in the decennial Passion Play was almost as well known 
in the United States and in England as in his native 
Bavaria, and better, I found than in Prussia. 

British and American tourist agencies had put 
Oberammergau on the map of the world. The interest 
in America after the Passion Play of 1910 was so great, 
in fact, that some newspapers ran extensive series of il- 
lustrated articles describing it. The man who played 
the part of Christ was idealised, everybody who had 
seen him liked him, respected him and admired him. 
Thousands had said that somehow a person felt better 
after he had seen Anton Lang. As a supreme test of 
his popularity, American vaudeville managers asked 
him to name his own terms for a theatrical tour. 

And now the man who had imbued his life with that 
of the Prince of Peace had thrown the past aside, and 
with the spiked helmet in place of the Crown of Thorns 

103 



I04 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

had gone to his death trying not to save but to slaughter 

his fellow-men. 

Truly, the changes wrought by war are great ! 
***** 

In Berlin I inquired into the circumstances of Anton 
Lang's death. Nobody knew anything definite. Ber- 
lin knew little of him in life, much less than London, 
'New York or Montreal. 

Munich is different. There his name is a household 
word. Herr von Meinl, then Director of the Bavarian 
Ministry, now member of the Bundesrat, told me that 
he believed that there was a mistake in the report that 
Anton had been killed. 

Later, when tramping through the Bavarian High- 
lands, I walked one winter day from Partenkirchen to 
Oberammergau, for I had a whim to know the truth 
of the matter. 

On the lonely mountain road that winds sharply up 
from Oberau I overtook a Benedictine monk who was 
walking to the monastery at Ettal. We talked of the 
war in general and of the Russian prisoners We had 
seen in the saw-mills at Untermberg. I was curious 
to hear his views upon the war, and I soon saw that not 
even the thick waUs of a monastery are proof against 
the idea-machine in the Wilhelmstrasse. Despite Car- 
dinal Mercier's denunciation of German methods in 
Belgium, this monk's views were the same as the rest of 
the Kaiser's subjects. He did, however, admit that he 
was sorry for the Belgians, although, in true German 
fashion, he did not consider Germany to blame. He 
sighed to think that "the Belgian King had so treacher- 
ously betrayed his people by abandoning his neutrality 



ANTON LANG OF OBERAMMERGAU 105 

and entering into a secret agreement with France and 
Great Britain." He recited tlie regular story of the 
secret military letters found by the Germans after they 
had invaded Belgium, the all-important marginal notes 
of which were maliciously left untranslated in the Ger- 
man Press, 

We parted at Ettal, and I pushed on down the narrow 
valley to Oberammergau. The road ahead was now in 
shadow, but behind me the mountain mass was dazzling 
white in the rays of the setting sun. "What a pity," I 
thought, "that the peasant must depart from these beau- 
tiful mountains and valleys to die in the slime of the 
trenches." 

The day was closing in quiet and grandeur, yet all 
the time the shadow of death was darkening the peace- 
ful valley of the Ammer. I became aware of it first as 
I passed the silent churchyard with its grey stones ris- 
ing from the snow. For there, on the other side of 
the old stone wall that marks the road, was a monument 
on which the Reaper hacks the toll of death. The list 
for 1870 was small, indeed, compared with that of die 
grosse Zeit. I looked for Lang and found it, for Hans 
had died, as had also Richard. 

I passed groups of men cutting wood and hauling ice 
and grading roads, men with rounder faces and flatter 
noses than the Bavarians, still wearing the yellowish- 
brown uniform of Russia. That is, most of them wore 
it. Some, whose uniforms had long since gone to tat- 
ters, were dressed in ordinary clothing, with flaming 
red R's painted on trousers and jackets. 

An old woman with a heavy basket on her back was 
trudging past a group of these. "How do you like 



io6 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

them ?" I asked. "We shall really miss them when they 
go," she said. "They seem part of the village now. 
The poor fellows, it must be sad for them so far from 
home." 

Evidently the spirit of new Germany had not satu- 
rated her. 

I went through crooked streets, bordered with houses 
brightly frescoed with biblical scenes, to the Pension 
Dahemn, the home of the man I wished to see. As he 
rose from his pottery bench to welcome me, I felt that 
beneath his great blue apron and rough garb of the 
working man was true nobility. I did not need to ask 
if he was Anton Lang. I had seen his picture and had 
often been told that his face was the image of His Who 
died on the Cross. I expected much, but found in- 
finitely more. I felt that life had been breathed into 
a Rubens masterpiece. ~Eo photograph can do him jus- 
tice, for no lens can catch the wondrous light in his clear 
blue eyes. 

I was the only guest at the Pension Daheim; indeed, 
I was the only stranger in Oberammergau. I sat beside 
Anton Lang in his work room as his steady hands fash- 
ioned things of clay, I ate at table with him, and in the 
evening we pulled up our chairs to the comfortable fire- 
side, where we talked of his country and of my country, 
of the Passion Play and of the war. 

I had been sceptical about him until I met him. I 
wondered if he was self-conscious about his goodness, 
or if he was a dreamer who could not get down to the 
realities of this world, or if he had been spoiled by 
flattery, or if piety was part of his profession. 

When I finally went from there I felt that I really 



ANTON LANG OF OBERAMMERGAU 107 

understood him. His life has been without an atom of 
reproach, yet he never poses as pious. He does not 
preach or stand aloof, or try to make you feel that he 
is better than you, but down in your heart you know 
that he is. He has been honoured by royalty and men 
of state, yet he remains simple and unaffected, though 
quietly dignified in manner. He is truly iN'ature's 
ISTobleman, with a mind that is pure and a face the mir- 
ror of his mind. 

To play well his role of Christus is the dominating 
passion of his life. 'Not the make-up box, but his own 
thoughts must mould his features for the role, which 
has been his in 1890, 1900 and 1910. 

His travels include journeys to Rome and to the Holy 
Land. He is well read, an interesting talker, and an 
interested listener. He commented upon the great 
change in the spirit of the people, a change from the 
intoxicating enthusiasm of victory to a war-weary feel- 
ing of trying to hold out through a sense of duty. To 
my question as to when he thought the war would end, 
he answered : "When Great Britain and Germany both 
realise that each must make concessions. IlTeither can 
crush the other." 

The doctrine that "only through hate can the greatest 
obstacles in life be overcome" has not reached his home, 
nor was there hanging on the wall, as in so many Ger- 
man homes, the famous order of the day of Crown 
Prince Rupert of Bavaria, which commences with "Sol- 
diers of the army! Before you are the English!" in 
which he exhorts his troops with all the tricky sophistry 
of hate. 

Anton Lang has worked long hard hours to bring up 



io8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

his family, rather than accept fabulous offers for a 
theatrical tour of America. He refused these offers 
through no mere caprice. 

"I admit that the temptation is great," he said to 
me. "Here I must always work hard and remain poor ; 
there I quickly could have grown rich. But the Pas- 
sion Play is not a business," he continued earnestly. 
"!N^early three hundred years ago, when a terrible plague 
raged over the land, the people of Oberammergau vowed 
to Almighty God that if He would save their village, 
they would perform every ten years in His glory the 
Passion of His Divine Son. The village was saved and 
Oberammergau has kept its promise. You see, if I had 
accepted those theatrical offers I could never again live 
in my native village, and that would break my heart." 

There is carefully preserved in the town hall at 
Oberammergau an old chronicle which tells of the 
plague. There will undoubtedly be preserved in the 
family of Lang a new chronicle, a product of the war, 
printed in another country, a chronicle which did not 
rest content with a notice of Anton's obituary, but told 
the details of his death in battle. 

Prau Lang showed me this chronicle. She seemed to 
have something on her mind of which she wished to 
speak, after I told her that I was an American jour- 
nalist. At length one evening, after the three younger 
children had gone to bed, and the eldest was indus- 
triously studying his lessons for the next day, she ven- 
tured. "American newspapers tell stories which are 
not at all true, don't they ?" she half stated, half asked. 

My natural inclination was to defend American jour- 
nalism by attacking that of Germany, but something re- 



ANTON LANG OF OBERAMMERGAU 109 

strained me, I did not know what. "Of course," I ex- 
plained, "in a country such as ours where the Press is 
free, evils sometimes arise. We have all kinds of news- 
papers. A few are very yellow, but the vast majority 
seek to be accurate, for accuracy pays in the long run 
in self-respecting journalism." I thought that perhaps 
she was referring to the announcement of the death of 
the man who was sitting with us in the room. We both 
agreed, however, that such a mistake was perfectly natu- 
ral since two Langs of Oberammergau had already been 
killed. In fact, Anton had read of his own death notice 
in a Munich paper. The American correspondent who 
had cabled the news on two occasions had presumably 
simply "lifted" the announcement from the German 
papers. Trau Lang could understand that very well 
when I explained, but how about the stories that Anton 
had been serving a machine-gun and other details which 
were pure fiction? 

She had trump cards which she played at this point. 
Two gaudily coloured "Sunday Supplements" of a cer- 
tain newspaper combination in the United States were 
spread before me. The first told of how Anton Lang 
had become a machine-gunner of marked ability, and 
that he served his deadly weapon with determination. 
Could the Oberammergau Passion Play ever exert the 
old influence again, after this ? was the query at the end 
of the article. 

A second had all the details of Anton's death and was 
profusely illustrated. The story started with Anton 
going years ago into the mountains to try out his voice 
in order to develop it for his histrionic task. There 
was a brief account of how he had followed in the path 



I lo THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

of the Prince of Peace, and of the tremendous effect he 
had upon his audiences. 

Then came the war, which tore him from his humble 
home. The battle raged, the Bavarians charged the 
Trench lines, and the spot-light of the story was played 
upon a soldier from Oberammergau who lay wounded 
in "ISTo-Man's Land." Another charging wave swept 
by this soldier, and as he looked up he saw the face of 
the man he had respected and loved more than all other 
men, the face of Anton Lang, the Christus of Oberam- 
mergau. The soldier covered his eyes with his hands, 
for never had Anton Lang looked as he did then. The 
eyes which had always been so beautiful, so compas- 
sionate, had murder in them now. 

The scene shifted. A French sergeant and private 
crouched by their machine-gun ready to repel the charge, 
the mutual relationship being apparently somewhat that 
of a plumber and his assistant. They sprayed the on- 
coming Bavarians with a shower of steel and piled the 
dead high outside the French trenches. The charge had 
failed, and the sergeant began to act strangely. At 
length he broke the silence. "Did you see that last 
hoche, Jean ?" he asked. "Did you see that face ?" Jean 
confessed that he did not. "You are fortunate, Jean," 
said the sergeant. "IN'ever have I seen such a face be- 
fore. I felt as if there was something supernatural 
about it. I felt that it was wrong to kill that man. I 
hated to do it, Jean. — But then the butcher was coming 
at us with a knife two feet long." 

I finished reading and looked up at the questioning 
eyes of Frau Lang and at the wonderful, indescribable 
blue eyes of the "butcher" across the table, who, I may 



ANTON LANG OF OBERAMMERGAU m 

add, is fiftj-two years of age, and has not had a day's 
military training in his life. 

"And look," said Frau Lang, "these men are not even 
Oberammergauer s. ' ' 

She pointed to one of the illustrations which de- 
picted a small group of rather vicious-looking Prus- 
sians, with rifles ready peering over the rim of a trench. 
The picture was labelled "Four apostles now serving at 
the Front." 

"And see," continued the perplexed woman, "there is 
Johann Zwinck, the Judas in the play. It says that he 
is at the front. Why, he is sixty-nine years old, and is 
still the village painter. Only yesterday I heard him 
complain that the war was making it difiicult for him 
to get sufiicient oil to mix his paint." 

I was at a loss for words. "When one compares such 
terrible untruths with our German White Book," de- 
clared Frau Lang, "it is indeed difficult for the Ameri- 
can people to understand the true situation." 

I felt that it would be useless for me at that moment 
to explain certain very important omissions in the Ger^ 
man White Book. Anything would look white in com' 
parison with the yellow journal I had just read. But 
I knew, and tried to explain that the particular news- 
paper combination which printed such rubbish was well 
known in America for its inaccuracies and fabrications, 
and although it was pro-German, it would sacrifice any- 
thing for sensation. But the good woman, being a Ger^ 
man, and consequently accustomed to standardisation^ 
could not dissociate this newspaper from the real Press, 



CHAPTER X 

SUBMAEINE MOTIVES 

THE German submarines are standardised. The 
draughts and blue prints of the most important 
machinery are multiplied and sent, if necessary, to 
twenty different factories, while all the minor stamp- 
ings are produced at one or other main factory. The 
"assembling" of the submarines, therefore, is not diffi- 
cult. During the war submarine parts have been as- 
sembled at Trieste, Zeebrugge, Kiel, Bremerhaven, Stet- 
tin, and half a dozen other places in Germany unneces- 
sary to relate. With commendable foresight, Germany 
sent submarine parts packed as machinery to South 
America, where they are being assembled somewhere on 
the west coast. 

The improvement, enlargement, and simplification 
of the submarine has progressed with great rapidity. 

When I was in England after a former visit to Ger- 
many I met a number of seafolk who pooh-poohed ex- 
tensive future submarining, by saying that, no matter 
how many submarines the Germans might be able to 
produce, the training of submarine officers and crew 
was such a difficult task that the "submarine menace," 
as it was then called in England, need not be taken too 
seriously. 

The difficulty is not so great. German submarine 
officers and men are trained by the simple process of 

1 12 



SUBMARINE MOTIVES 113 

double or treble banking of the crews of submarines on 
more or less active service. Submarine crews are there- 
fore multiplied probably a great deal faster than the 
war destroys them. These double or treble crews, who 
rarely go far away from German waters, and are mostly 
trained in the safe Baltic, are generally composed of 
young but experienced seamen. There are, however, 
an increasing number of cases of soldiers being trans- 
ferred abruptly to the U-boat service. 

The education of submarine officers and crew begins 
in thorough German fashion on land or in docks, in 
dummy or disused submarines, accompanied by much 
lecture work and drill. Submarine life is not so un- 
comfortable as we think. With the exception of the 
deprivation of his beer, which is not allowed in sub- 
marines, or, indeed, any form of alcohol, except a small 
quantity of brandy, which is kept under the captain's 
lock and key, Hans in his submarine is quite as com- 
fortable as Johann in his destroyer. 

Extra comforts are forwarded to submarine men, 
which consist of gramophone records (mostly Viennese 
waltzes), chocolate, sausages, smoked eels, margarine, 
cigars, cigarettes, and tobacco, a small and treasured 
quantity of real coffee, jam, marmalade, and sugar. All 
these, I was proudly told, were extras. There is no 
shortage in the German iNavy. 

I learned nothing of value about the largest German 
submarines, except that everybody in Germany knew 
they were being built, and by the time the gossip of 
them reached Berlin the impression there was that they 
were at least as large as Atlantic liners. 

'Now as to German submarine policies. The part 



1 14 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

that has to do with winning the war will be dealt with 
in the next chapter. But there is also a definite policy 
in connection with the use of submarines for winning 
the ^Var after the war." 

The ]^ational Liberal Party, of which Tirpitz is the 
god, is at the head of the vast, gradually solidifying 
mammoth trust, which embraces Krupps, the mines, 
shipbuilding yards, and the manufactures. J^ow and 
then a little of its growth leaks out, such as the linking 
up of Krupps with the new shipbuilding. 

The scheme is brutally simple and is going on under 
the eyes of the British every day. These people be- 
lieve that hy building ships themselves and destroying 
enemy and neutral shipping, they will be the world's 
shipping masters at the termination of the war. In 
their attitude towards IsTorwegian shipping, you will 
notice that they make the flimsiest excuse for the de- 
struction of as much tonnage as they can sink. It was 
confidently stated to me by a member of the l^ational 
Liberal Party, and by no means an unimportant one, 
that Germany is building ships as rapidly as she is sink- 
ing them. That I do not believe ; but that a great part 
of her effort is devoted to the construction of mercan- 
tile vessels I ascertained beyond the shadow of a doubt. 

I have met people in England who refuse to believe 
that Germany, battling on long lines east and west, and 
constructing with feverish haste war vessels of every 
description, can find sufiicient surplus energy to build 
ships which will not be of the slightest use until after 
the war is finished. I can only say that I personally 
have seen the recently completed Hamburg-America 
liners Cap Polonio and Cap Finisterre anchored in the 



SUBMARINE MOTIVES 115 

Elbe off Altona. They are beautiful boats of 20,000 
and 16,000 tons, a credit to the German shipbuilding 
industry, which has made such phenomenal strides in 
recent years. At Stettin I passed almost under the 
stern of the brand new 21,000 ton Hamburg-South 
America liner, Tirpitz — which for obvious business 
reasons may be re-named after the war. 

Both at Hamburg and Liibeck, where the rattle of 
the pneumatic riveter was as incessant as in any Ameri- 
can city in course of construction, I was amazed at the 
number of vessels of five or six thousand tons which I 
saw being built. Furthermore, the giant ISTorth German 
Lloyd liner, Hindenhurg, is nearing completion, while 
the Bismarch, of the Hamburg-America Line will be 
ready for her maiden trip in the early days of peace. 

Another part (rf the IsTational Liberals' policy is the 
keeping alive of all German businesses, banks and 
others, in enemy countries. Some people in England 
seem to think that the Germans are anxious to keep 
these businesses alive in order to make money. Many 
Germans regard John Bull as extremely simple, but not 
so simple as to allow them to do that. So long as the 
businesses are kept going until after the war, when they 
can again start out with redoubled energy, the Germans 
desire nothing more. The Deutsche Bank, for example, 
which bears no comparison to an English or American 
bank, but which is an institution for promoting both 
political and industrial enterprise, is entrenched be- 
hind so powerful an Anglo-German backing in London, 
I was informed on many occasions, that the British Gov- 
ernment dare not close it down. The mixture of spying 
and propaganda with banking, with export, with manu- 



1 1 6 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

facture, seems so foreign to Anglo-Saxon ways as to be 
almost inconceivable. 

Coincident with the destruction of foreign shipping, 
and the maintenance of their businesses in enemy coun- 
tries (England and Italy especially) is the exploita- 
tion of the coal and other mines, oil wells, and forests 
in occupied enemy territory. The French and Belgian 
coalfields are being worked to the utmost, together with 
the iron mines at Longwy and Brieux. Poland is being 
deforested to such an extent that the climate is actually 
altering. 

It is a vast and definite scheme, with such able lead- 
ers as Herr Bassermann, the real leader of the National 
Liberal Party, Herr Stresemann, and Herr Hirseh, of 
Essen. "We have powerful friends, not only in Lon- 
don, Milan, Eome, Madrid, New York, and Montreal, 
but throughout the whole of South America, and every- 
where except in Australia where that verdammter 
Eooges (Hughes) played into the hands of our feeble, 
so-called leader, von Bethmann-HoUweg, by warning the 
people that the British people would follow Hughes' 
lead." 

So much for the commercial part of submarining. 

U-boating close to England has long ceased to be a 
popular amusement with the German submarine flotilla, 
who have a thoroughly healthy appreciation of the vari- 
ous devices by which so many of them have been de- 
stroyed. The National Liberals believe that the British 
will not be able to tackle long-distance submarines oper- 
ating in the Atlantic and elsewhere. Their radius of 
action is undoubtedly increasing almost month by 
month. From remarks made to me I do not believe that 



SUBMARINE MOTIVES 117 

these submarines have many land bases at great dis- 
tances — certainly none in the United States. They may 
have floating bases; but this I do know — that their 
petrol-carrying capacity altogether exceeds that of any 
earlier type of submarine, and that their surface speed, 
at any rate in official tests, runs up to nearly 20 knots. 

The trip of the Deutschland was not only for the 
purpose of bringing a few tons of nickel and rubber, 
but for thoroughly testing the new engines (designed 
by Maybach), for bringing back a hundred reports of 
the effects of submersion in such cold waters as are to 
be found off the banks of ^Newfoundland, for ascertain- 
ing how many days' submerged or surface travelling is 
likely to be experienced, and, indeed, for making such 
a trial trip across the Atlantic and back as was usual 
in the early days of steamships. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE EAG1.E AND THE VULTUEE 

AN" enthusiastic, war-mad crowd had gathered about 
an impromptu speaker in the Ringstrasse, not far 
from the Hotel Bristol, in Vienna, one pleasant August 
evening in 1914. His theme was the military prowess 
of Austria-Hungary and Germany. 

"And now," he concluded, "Japan has treacherously 
joined our enemies. Yet we should not be disturbed, 
for her entrance will but serve to bring us another ally 
too. You all know of the ill-feeling between the United 
States and Japan. At any moment we may hear that 
the great Republic has declared war." He called for 
cheers, and the Ringstrasse echoed with HochI Hoch! 
Hoch ! for the United States of America. 

That was my introduction to European opinion of 
my country during the war. During my four weeks in 
the Austro-Serbian zone of hostilities, I had heard no 
mention of anything but the purely military business 
at hand. 

The following evening from the window of an "Amer- 
ican-Tourist-Special Train" I looked down on the happy 
Austrians who jammed the platform, determined to give 
the Americans a grand send-off, which they did with 
flag-waving and cheers. A stranger on the platform 
thrust a lengthy typewritten document into my hands, 
with the urgent request that I should give it to the Press 

ii8 



THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE 119 

in New York. It was a stirring appeal to Americans 
to "witness the righteousness of the cause of the Central 
Powers in this war which had been forced upon them." 
Three prominent citizens of Vienna had signed it, one 
of whom was the famous Doctor Lorenz. 

Berlin, in an ecstasy of joyful anticipation of the 
rapid and triumphal entrance into Paris, was a repeti- 
tion of Vienna. True, in the beginning, Americans, 
mistaken for Englishmen by some of the undiscerning, 
had been roughly treated, but a hint from those in high 
authority changed that. In like manner, well-meaning 
patriots who persisted in indiscriminately mobbing all 
members of the yellow race were urged to differentiate 
between Chinese and Japanese. 

So I found festive Berlin patting Americans on the 
back, cheering Americans in German-American meet- 
ings, and prettily intertwining the Stars and Stripes 
and the German flag. 

"Now is your opportunity to take Canada," said the 
man in the street. In fact, it was utterly incomprehen- 
sible to the average German that we should not indulge 
in some neighbouring land-grabbing while Britain was 
so busy with affairs in Europe. 

The German Eoreign Office was, of course, under no 
such delusion, although it had cherished the equally ab- 
surd belief that England's colonies would rebel at the 
first opportunity. The Wilhelmstrasse was, however, 
hard at work taking the propaganda which it had so 
successfully crammed down the throats of the German 
citizen and translating it into English to be crammed 
down the throats of the people in America. This was 
simply one of the Wilhelmstrasse's numerous mistakes 



1 20 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

in the psychological analysis of other people. But the 
Wilhelmstrasse possesses the two estimable qualities of 
perseverance and willingness to learn, with the result 
that its recent propaganda in the United States has been 
much more subtle and very much more effective. 

The American newspapers which reached Germany 
after the outbreak of war gave that country its first in- 
timation that her rush through Belgium was decidedly 
unpopular on the other side of the Atlantic. Further- 
more, many American newspapers depicted the Kaiser 
and the Crovni Prince in a light quite new to German 
readers, who with their heads full of Divine Right ideas 
considered the slightest caricature of their imperial 
family as brutally sacrilegious. 

But the vast majority of Germans never saw an 
American newspaper. How is it, then, that they began 
to hate the United States so intensely ? The answer is 
simple. In the early winter of 1914-15, the German 
Government with its centralised control of public opin- 
ion turned on the current of hatred against everything 
American as it had already done against everything 
British, for the war had come to a temporary stalemate 
on both fronts, and the Wilhelmstrasse had to excuse 
their failure to win the short, sharp pleasant war into 
which the people had jumped with anticipation of easy 
victory. "If it were not for American ammunition the 
war would have been finished long ago!" became the 
key-note of the new gospel of hate, a gospel which has 
been preached down to the present. 

Just before I left Germany the "Eeklam Book Com- 
pany" of Leipzig issued an anti-American circular 
which flooded the country. The request that people 



THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE 121 

should enclose it in all their private letters was slav- 
ishly followed with the same zest with which the Ger- 
mans had previously attached Gott strafe England 
stickers to their correspondence. 

The circular represented a 7000-ton steamer ready 
to take on board the cargo of ammunition which was 
arranged neatly on the pier in the foreground. The 
background was occupied by German troops, black lines 
dividing them into three parts, tagged respectively — 
30,000 Mlled, 40,000 slightly wounded, 40,000 seri- 
ously wounded. This, then, is the graphic illustration 
of the casualties inflicted upon the German Army by a 
single cargo of one moderate-sized liner. 

Since at such a rate, it would take less than two hun- 
dred cargoes of this astoundingly effective ammunition 
to put the entire German Army out of action, one won- 
ders why Britain troubles herself to convert her in- 
dustries. 

Ere the first winter of war drew to a close the official 
manipulators of the public opinion battery had success- 
fully electrified the nation into a hate against the United 
States second only to that bestowed on Great Britain. 
And so it came about that the Government had the solid 
support of the people when the original submarine man- 
ifesto of February 4th, 1915, warning neutral vessels 
to keep out of the war zone, threatened a rupture with 
the United States. When two weeks later Washington 
sent a sharp note of protest to Berlin, the Germans be- 
came choleric every time they spoke of America or met 
an American. 

"Why should we let America interfere with our plan 
to starve England?" was the question I heard repeat- 



122 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

edly. Their belief that tliey could starve England was 
absolute. What could be simpler than putting a ring 
of U-boats round the British Isles and cutting off all 
trade until the pangs of hunger should compel Britain 
to yield ? I heard no talk then about the "base crime 
of starving women and children," which became their 
whine a year later when the knife began to cut the other 
way. 

In 1915 it was immaterial to the mass of Germans 
whether America joined their enemies or not. Their 
training had led them to think in army corps, and they 
frankly and sneeringly asked us, "What could you do ?" 
They were still in the stage where they freely applied to 
enemies and possible enemies the expression, "They are 
afraid of us." "The more enemies, the more glory," 
was the inane motto so popular early in the war that it 
was even printed on post cards. 

The GulfUght, flying the Stars and Stripes, was tor- 
pedoed in the reign of submarine anarchy immediately 
inaugurated. But two can play most games, and when 
the British l^avy made it increasingly difficult for U- 
boats to operate in the waters near the British Isles, the 
German Foreign Office and the German Admiralty be- 
gan to entertain divergent opinions concerning the ad- 
visability of pushing the submarine campaign to a point 
which would drag the United States into the war. 

Only a few people in Germany know that von Beth- 
mann-HoUweg strenuously opposed the plan to sink the 
'Lusitania. That is, he opposed it up to a point. The 
advertisement from the German Embassy at Washing- 
ton which appeared in American newspapers warning 
Americans could not have appeared without his sane-, 



THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE 123 

tion. In the last days of July, 1914, backed by the 
Kaiser, he had opposed the mobilisation order sufficient 
to cause a three days' delay — which his military op- 
ponents in German politics claim was the chief cause 
of the failure to take Paris — but in the case of the Lusi- 
tania he was even more powerless against rampant mili- 
tarism. 

For nearly a year after the colossal blunder of the 
Lusitania there existed in the deep undercurrents of 
German politics a most remarkable whirlpool of dis- 
cord, in which the policy of von Tirpitz was a severe 
tax on the patience of von Bethmann-Hollweg and the 
Foreign Office, for it was they who had to invent all 
sorts of plausible excuses to placate various neutral 
Powers. 

The Kaiser after disastrously meddling with the Gen- 
eral Staff during the first month of the war, subse- 
quently took no active hand in military, naval and po- 
litical policies unless conflicts between his chosen chief- 
tains forced him to do so. 

One striking instance of this occurred when the 
Wilhelmstrasse discovered that Washington was in pos- 
session of information in the "Arabic incident" which 
made the official excuses palpably too thin. After the 
German authorities became convinced that their failure 
to guarantee that unresisting merchantmen would not 
be sunk until passengers and crew were removed to a 
place of safety would cause a break with the United 
States, Tirpitz asserted that the disadvantages to Ger- 
many from America as an enemy would be slight in 
comparison with the advantages from the relentless sub- 
marining which in his opinion would defeat Britain. 



1 24 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

He therefore advocated that no concessions be made to 
Washington. Von Bethmann-Hollweg was of the op- 
posite opinion. A deadlock resulted, which was broken 
when the Kaiser summoned both men to separate and 
secret conferences. He decided in favour of the Chan- 
cellor, whereupon Washington received the famous 
"Arabic Guarantees." It is highly significant that 
these were never made known to the German people. 

Then followed six months of "frightfulness," broken 
pledges, notes, crises, semi-crises, and finally the great 
crisis de luxe in the case of the Sussex. When, a few 
days after my return to England from Germany, I used 
the expression "Sussex Crisis" to a leading Englishman, 
he expressed surprise at the term "crisis." "We did not 
get the impression in England that the affair was a real 
crisis," he said. 

My experiences in Germany during the last week in 
April and the first four days in May, 1916, left no 
doubt in my mind that I was living through a crisis, the 
outcome of which would have a tremendous effect upon 
the subsequent course of the war. Previous dealings 
with Washington had convinced the German Govern- 
ment as well as the German people that the American 
Government would stand for anything. Thus the ex- 
traordinary Explanation of the German Foreign Ofiice 
that the Sussex was not torpedoed by a German subma- 
rine, since the only U-boat commander who had fired a 
torpedo in the channel waters on the fateful day had 
made a sketch of the vessel which he had attacked, 
which, according to the sketch, was not the Sussex. 

The German people were so supremely satisfied with 
this explanation that they displayed chagrin which 



THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE 125 

quickly changed to ugliness when the German Press was 
allowed to print enough of the news from Washington 
to prepare the public mind for something sharp from 
across the Atlantic. I have seen Berlin joyful, serious, 
and sad during the war; I have seen it on many mem- 
orable days ; but never have I seen it exactly as on Sat- 
urday, April 22nd, the day when the Sussex Ultimatum 
was made known through the Press. The news was 
headlined in the afternoon editions. The eager crowds 
snapped them up, stood still in their tracks, and then 
one and all expressed their amazement to anybody near 
them. "President Wilson began by shaking his fist at 
Germany, and ended by shaking his finger," was the 
way one of the President's political opponents sum- 
marised his !N^otes. That was the opinion in Germany. 
And now he had "pulled a gun." The Germans could 
not understand it. When they encountered any of the 
few Americans left in their country they either foamed 
in rage at them, or, in blank amazement, asked them 
what it was all about. 

t It was extremely interesting to the student of the 
war to see that the people really did not understand 
what it was all about. Theodor Wolff, the brilliant edi- 
tor of the Berliner Tagehlatt, with great daring for a 
German editor, raised this point in the edition in which 
the Ultimatum was printed. He asserted that the Ger- 
man people did not understand the case because they 
purposely had been left in the dark by the Government. 
He said, among other things, that his countrymen were 
in no position to understand the feeling of resentment 
in the United States, because the meagre reports per- 
mitted in the German Press never described such de- 



1 2 6 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

tails as the death agonies of women and children strug- 
gling helplessly in the water. 

This article in the Tagehlatt was the striking excep- 
tion to the rest of the Press comment throughout Ger- 
many, for the German Government made one of its 
typical moves at this point. "To climb down or not to 
climb down," was a question which would take several 
days to decide. Public opinion was already sufficiently 
enraged against America to give the Government united 
support in case of a break, but it must be made more 
enraged and consequently more united. Thus on Easter 
Sunday the full current of hate was turned on in the 
German Press. President Wilson was violently at- 
tacked for working in the interest of the Allies, whom 
he wished to save. Germany would not bow to this in- 
justice, she would fight, and America, too, would be 
made to feel what it means to go to war with Germany. 
The German Press did its part to inflame a united 
German sentiment, and the Foreign Office, which be- 
lieves in playing the game both ways when it is of ad- 
vantage to do so, with characteristic thoroughness did 
not permit the American correspondents to cable to their 
papers the virulent lies, such as those in the Tdgliche 
Rundschau, about the affair in general and President 
Wilson in particular. These papers were furthermore 
not allowed to leave Germany. 

On the evening preceding the publication of the Ul- 
timatum, Maximilian Harden's most famous number of 
the Zuhunft appeared with the title "If I Were Wil- 
son." On Saturday morning it was advertised on yel- 
low and black posters throughout Berlin, and was 
qui'ckly bought by a feverish public to whom anything 



THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE 127 

pertaining to German-American relations was of the 
sharpest interest. The remarkable article was directly 
at variance with all the manufactured ideas which had 
been storming in German brains for more than a year. 
The British sea policy was represented in a light quite 
different from the officially incubated German concep- 
tion of it. President Wilson was correctly portrayed as 
strictly neutral in all his official acts. This staggered 
Harden's readers quite as much as his attacks on the 
brutal submarine policy of his country. 

A careless censor had allowed "If I Were Wilson," to 
appear. But a vigilant Government, ever watchful of 
the food for the minds of its children, hastened with the 
usual police methods to correct the mistake. The Zu- 
hunft was hescJilagnahmt, which means that the police 
hastily gathered up all unsold copies at the publishers, 
kiosks, and wherever else they were to be found. If a 
policeman saw one in a man's pocket he took it away. 

Why did the Government do everything in its power 
to suppress this article ? The Government fully under- 
stood that there was nothing in it that was not true, 
nothing in it of a revolutionary character. It divulged 
no military or naval secrets. It was a simple statement 
of political truths. But the German great Idea Fac- 
tory in the Wilhelmstrasse does not judge printed mat- 
ter from its truth or falsity. The forming of the public 
mind in the mould in which it will best serve the in- 
terests of the State is the sole consideration. While the 
Directors of Thought were deliberating on the relative 
disadvantages of a curtailment of submarine activity 
and America as an enemy, and the order of the day was 
to instill hatred, no matter how, they decided that it 



1 2 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

would be inadvisable for the people to read the true 
statements of Harden. 

One American correspondent began to cable five 
thousand words of "If I Were Wilson" to his paper. 
The Censor stopped him after he had sent thirteen hun- 
dred. A rival correspondent, when he glanced at the 
article immediately after it had appeared, decided that 
it was more suitable for mail matter than cable matter, 
put it in an envelope, and actually scored a scoop over 
all opponents. 

During the following days, when the leaders of Ger- 
many were in conference at the Headquarters of the 
General Staff, I travelled as much as possible to find 
out German sentiment. The people were intoxicated 
with the successes against Verdun, and were angrily in 
favour of a break. One German editor said to me, 
"The Government has educated them to believe that the 
U-boat can win the war. Their belief is so firm that 
it will be difficult for the authorities to explain a back- 
down to Wilson." 

It was not. The Government can explain anything 
to the German people. The back-down came, causing 
sentiments which can be divided into three groups. 
One, "We were very good to give in to America. Eng- 
land would not be so good." Two, "Americans put us 
in a bad position. To curtail our submarine weapon 
means a lengthening of the war. On the other hand, to 
add America to the list of our enemies would lengthen 
the war still more." Three, "We shall wait our oppor- 
tunity and pay back America for what she has done 
to us." I heard the latter expression everywhere, par- 
ticularly among the upper classes. It was the expres- 



THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE 129 

sion of Doctor Drechsler, head of the Amerika-Institut 
in Berlin, and one of the powerful propaganda trium- 
virate composed of himself, Doctor Bertling, and the 
late Professor Miinsterberg. 

With the increasing deterioration inside the German 
Empire the resolve of the Chancellor to avoid a clash 
with the United States strengthened daily. His op- 
ponents, however, most of the great Agrarians and Na- 
tional Liberals, the men behind Tirpitz, continue to 
work for a new submarine campaign in which all neu- 
trals will be warned that their vessels will be sunk 
without notice if bound to or from the ports of Ger- 
many's enemies. They are practical men, who believe 
that only through the unrestricted use of the submarine 
<3an Britain, whom they call the keystone of the oppo- 
sition, be beaten. The Chancellor is also a practical 
man, who believes that the entrance of America on the 
side of the Entente would seal the fate of Germany. 
He is supported by Herr HelfFerich, the Vice-Chancel- 
lor, and Herr Zimmermann, the Foreign Secretary, men 
with a deep insight into the questions of trade and 
treaties. They believe that peace will be made across 
the table and not at the point of the sword, and they 
realise that it is much better for Germany not to have 
the United States at the table as an enemy. 

In September, 1916, the Chancellor began to lay the 
wires for a new campaign, a campaign to enlist the ser- 
vices of Uncle Sam in a move for peace. It is signifi- 
cant, however, that he and his Government continue to 
play the game both ways. While Germany presses her 
official friendship on the United States, and conducts 
propaganda there to bring the two nations closer to- 



1 30 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

gether, she at the same time keeps up the propaganda 
of hate at home against America, in order to have the 
support of the people in case of emergency. 

The attacks against Washington in the Continental 
Times show which way the wind blows, for this paper 
is subsidised by the German Foreign Oflfice through the 
simple device of buying 30,000 copies of each issue — 
it appears three times weekly — at 2^<^. per copy. The 
editors are Aubrey Stanhope, an Englishman who even 
before the war could not return to his native country 
for reasons of his own, and R. L. Orchelle, whose real 
name is Hermann Scheifauer, who claims to be an 
American, but is not known as such at the. American 
Embassy in Berlin, He has specialised in attacks 
against Great Britain in the United States. Some of 
the vicious onslaughts against Washington in Germany 
were made by him. 

American flags are scarce in Berlin to-day, but one 
always waves from the window of 48, Potsdamerstrasse. 
It is a snare for the unwary, but the League uses it 
here as in countless other instances as a cloak for its 
warfare against the U.S.A. 

The League started early in the war by issuing book- 
lets by the ton for distribution in Germany and Amer- 
ica. Subscription blanks were scattered broadcast for 
contributions for the cause of light and truth. Dona- 
tions soon poured in, some of them very large, from 
Germans and German-Americans who wished, many of 
them sincerely, to have what they considered the truth 
told about Germany. 

The ways of the League, however, being crooked, 
some of the charter members began to fall away from 



THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE 131 

one another and many of the doings of the ringleaders 
are now coming to light. 

The League must be doing well financially, as Wil- 
liam Martin, the chief of the Potsdamerstrasse office, 
jubilantly declared that no matter how the war ended 
he would come out of it with a million. 

Any real American, whether at home or abroad, 
deeply resents the degradation of his flag. Yet the 
League of Truth in Berlin has consistently dragged the 
Stars and Stripes in the mire, and that in a country 
which boasts that the police are not only omniscient but 
omnipotent. 

A constant attempt, in accordance with the policy of 
most German newspapers, I may add, is made to de- 
pict us as a spineless jelly-fish nation. They have re- 
garded principles of international custom as little as the 
manipulators of submarines under the reign of Tirpitz. 

Last fourth of July, Charles Mueller, a pseudo- 
American, hung from his home in the busy Kurfiirsten- 
damm a huge American flag with a deep border of 
black that Berlin might see a "real American's" symbol 
of humiliation. On the same day, dear to the hearts of 
Americans, a four-page flyer was spread broadcast 
through the German capital with a black border on the 
front page enclosing a black cross. The Declaration of 
Independence was bordered with black inside and an 
ode to American degradation by John L. Stoddard com- 
pleted the slap in the face. 

The League selected January 2TtH, 1916, the Kaiser'g 
birthday, as a suitable occasion for Mueller and Marten, 
not even hyphenates, solemnly and in the presence of a 
great crowd to place an immense wreath at the base of 



132 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

the statue of Frederick the Great on the Linden, with 
the inscription "Wilson and his Press are not America." 

The stern Police Department of Berlin does not per- 
mit the promiscuous scattering of floral decorations and 
advertising matter on the statues of German gods, and 
the fact that the wreath remained there month after 
month proved that somebody high up was sanctioning 
the methods of the League. 

The protests of the American Ambassador were of 
no avail, until he determined to make an end of the 
humiliation, after three months, by threatening to go 
down to this busy section of Berlin, near the Royal Pal- 
ace, and remove the wreath himself. Force is the only 
argument which impresses the Prussians, and we are 
extremely fortunate that our Ambassador to Germany is 
a man of force. 

The League, however, had printed a picture of the 
wreath in its issue of Light and Truth, which it en- 
deavours to circulate everywhere. 

Stoddard, mentioned above, is the famous lecturer. 
He has written booklets for the League, one of which I 
read in America. His last pamphlet, however, is a 
most scurrilous attack against his country. He raves 
against America, and, after throwing the facts of in- 
ternational law to the winds, he shrieks for the impeach- 
ment of Wilson to stop this slaughter for which he has 
sold himself. 

It is no secret in Berlin that the League have sys- 
tematically hounded Mr. Gerard. I do not know why 
they hate him, unless it is because he is a member of 
the American Government. I have heard it said that 
one way to get at Wilson was through his Ambassador. 



THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE 133 

Their threats and abuse became so great that he and one 
of the American newspaper correspondents went to 48, 
Potsdamerstrasse during the Sussex crisis to warn the 
leaders. They answered by swearing out a warrant 
against Mr, Gerard with the Berlin police — ^paying no 
heed to international customs in such matters — and cir- 
culating copies of the charge broadcast. 

Readers who are familiar with Germany know that 
if a man does not instantly defend himself against Be- 
leidigung society judges him guilty. Thus this and 
countless other printed circulations of falsehood against 
Mr. Gerard have cruelly hurt him throughout Ger- 
many, as I know from personal investigation. IlText to 
Mr. Wilson and a few men in England he is the most 
hated man among the German people. He finally felt 
obliged to deny in the German Press some of the ab- 
surd stories circulated about him, such as that of Mrs. 
Gerard putting a German decoration he received on her 
dog. 

Mueller, however, was not content with mere printed 
attacks, but has made threats against the life of the 
American Ambassador. A prominent American has 
sworn an affidavit to this effect, but Mueller still pur- 
sues his easy way. On the night that the farewell din- 
ner was being given to a departing secretary at our 
Embassay, Mueller and a German ofiicer went about 
Berlin seeking Mr. Gerard for the professed purpose of 
picking a fight with him. They went to Richards' 
Restaurant, where the dinner was being given, but for- 
tunately missed the Ambassador. 

The trickery of the League would fill a volume, for 
Marten especially is particularly clever. He leapt into 



134 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

fame in Berlin bj going to Belgium "at his own risk," 
as he says, to refute the charges of German cruelty 
there. His book on Belgium, and a later one claiming 
to refute the Bryce report, are unimpressive since they 
fail to introduce facts, and the writer contents himself 
for the main part with soliloquies on Belgian battle- 
fields, in which he attacks Kussian aggression and 
Britain's perfidy in entering the war. The Belgians, 
we gather, are more or less delighted with the change 
from Albert to Wilhelm. 

Marten prints testimonials of the book from leading 
Germans, most of whom, such as General Falkenhayn, 
content themselves with acknowledgment of receipt with 
thanks and statement of having read the work. Count 
Zeppelin goes further, and hopes that the volume will 
find a wide circulation, particularly in neutral countries. 

And now for the vice-president of this anti- American 
organisation. He is St. John GafFney, former Ameri- 
can Consul-General to Munich. He belongs to the mod- 
ern martyr series of the German of to-day. All over 
Germany I was told that he was dismissed by Mr. Wil- 
son because he sympathised with Germany. The Ger- 
mans as a mass know nothing further, but I can state 
from unimpeachable authority that he used rooms of 
the American Hospital in Munich, while a member of 
the board of that hospital and an ofiicer in the consular 
service of the United States, for propaganda purposes. 
His presence became so objectionable to the heads of 
the hospital, excellent people whose sole aim is to aid 
suffering humanity, that he was ousted. 

He returned from his American trip after his dis- 
missal last year and gave a widely quoted interview 



THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE 135 

upon arrival in Germany which sought to discredit 
America — through hitting Mr. Wilson and the Press — 
in the most tense point of our last altercation in Feb- 
ruary with Germany over the Lusitania. Such men as 
Gaffney are greatly to blame for many German delu- 
sions. 

Mr. Gerard is not the only official whose path has 
not been strewn with roses in Germany. Our military 
attache has not been permitted to go to the German 
front for nearly a year, and the snub is apparent in the 
newspaper and Government circles of Berlin. He is 
probably the only one left behind. 

The big Press does not use League of Truth material 
and certain other anti-American copy which would be 
bad for Germany, to reach foreign critics' attacks. 
Many provincial papers, however, furiously protested 
against the recent trip of the American military attache 
through industrial Germany. It was only the Ameri- 
can, not other foreign attaches, to whom they objected. 

All this is useful to the German Government, for it 
keeps the populace in the right frame of mind for two 
purposes. In the first place, a hatred of America in- 
spired by the belief that she is really an enemy, gives 
the German Government greater power over the people. 
Secondly, should the Wilhelmstrasse decide to play the 
relentless submarine warfare as its last hand it will have 
practically united support. 



CHAPTEK XII 

IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET 

THERE is only one way to realise the distress in Ger- 
many, and that is to go there and travel as widely 
as possible — preferably on foot. The truth about the 
food situation and the growing discontent cannot be 
told by the neutral correspondent in Germany. It must 
be memorised and carried across the frontier in the 
brain, for the searching process extends to the very skin 
of the traveller. If he has an umbrella or a stick it is 
likely to be broken for examination. The heels are 
taken from his boots lest they may conceal writings. 
This does not happen in every case, but it takes place 
frequently. Many travellers are in addition given an 
acid bath to develop any possible writing in invisible 
ink. 

In Germany, as it is no longer possible to conceal the 
actual state of affairs from any but highly placed and 
carefully attended neutrals travelling therein, the ut- 
most pains are being taken to mislead the outside world. 
The foreign correspondents are not allowed to send any- 
thing the Government does not wish to get out. They 
are, moreover, regularly dosed with propaganda dis- 
tributed by the Nachrichtendienst (Publicity Service 
of the Foreign Office). 

One of the books handed round to the neutrals when 
I was in Berlin w^s a treatise on the German industrial 

136 



IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET 137 

and economic situation by Professor Cassell, of the 
University of Upsala, Sweden. 

He came upon the invitation of the German author- 
ities for a three weeks' study of conditions. In his 
preface he artlessly mentions that he was enabled to 
accomplish so much in three weeks owing to the praise- 
worthy way in which everything was arranged for him. 
He compiled his work from information discreetly 
imparted at interviews with officials, from printed sta- 
tistics, and from observations made on carefully 
shepherded expeditions. ^N^eutral correspondents are 
expected to use this sort of thing, which is turned out 
by the hundredweight, as the basis of their communica- 
tions to their newspapers. We were supplied with a 
similar volume on the "Great German naval victory 
of Jutland." 

One feels in Germany that the great drama of the 
war is the drama of the food supply — the struggle of 
a whole nation to prevent itself being exhausted through 
hunger and shortage of raw materials. 

After six months of war the bread ticket was intro- 
duced, which guaranteed thirty-eight ordinary sized 
rolls or equivalent each week to everybody throughout 
the Empire. In the autumn of 1915 Tuesday and Fri- 
day became meatless days. The butter lines had become 
an institution towards the close of the year. There was 
little discomfort, however. 

For seventeen months Germany laughed at the at- 
tempt to starve her out. Then, early in 1916 came a 
change. An economic decline was noticeable, a decline 
which was rapid and continuous during each succeeding 
month. Pork disappeared from the menu, beef became 



138 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

scarcer and scarcer, but veal was plentiful until April. 
In March sugar could be obtained in only small quan- 
tities, six months later the unnutritious saccharine had 
almost completely replaced it. Tish continued in abun- 
dance, but became increasingly expensive. A shortage 
in meat caused a run on eggs. In September egg cards 
limited each person to two eggs per week, in December 
the maximum became one egg in two weeks. Vege- 
tables, particularly cabbage and turnips, were plentiful 
enough to be of great help. 

In Berlin the meat shortage became 4S0 acute in 
April, 1916, that for five days in the week preceding 
Easter most butchers' shops did not open their doors. 
This made it imperative that the city should extend 
the ticket rationing system to meat. The police issued 
cards to the residents of their districts, permitting them 
to purchase one-half pound of meat per week from a 
butcher to whom they were arbitrarily assigned in order 
to facilitate distribution. The butchers buy through the 
municipal authorities, who contract for the entire sup- 
ply of the city. The tickets are in strips, each of which 
represents a week, and each strip is subdivided into five 
sections for the convenience of diners in restaurants. 

Since the supply in each butcher's shop was seldom 
sufficient to let everybody be served in one day, the 
custom of posting in the windows or advertising in the 
local papers "Thursday, l^os. 1-500," and later, Sat- 
urday, N"os. 501-1000," was introduced. A few butch- 
ers went still further and announced at what hours 
certain numbers could be served, thus doing away with 
the long queues. 

Most of the competent authorities with whom I dis- 



IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET 139 

cussed the matter agreed that the great flaw in the meat 
regulations was that, unlike those of bread, they were 
only local and thus there were great differences and cor- 
respondinng discontent all over Germany. 

One factor which contributed to Germany's shortage 
of meat was the indiscriminate killing of the live- 
stock, especially pigs, when the price of fodder first rose 
in the last months of 1914. Most of this excess killing 
was done by the small owners. Our plates were heaped 
unnecessarily. Some of the dressing was done so hur- 
riedly and carelessly that there were numerous cases of 
pork becoming so full of worms that it had to be 
destroyed. 

The great agrarian junkers were not forced by lack 
of fodder to kill; consequently they own a still larger 
proportion of the live-stock than they did at the begin- 
ning of the war. 

On October 1st, 1916, the regulation of meat was 
taken out of the hands of the local authorities so far 
as their power to regulate the amount for each person 
was concerned, and this amount was made practically 
the same throughout Germany. 

First and foremost in the welfare of the people, what- 
ever may be said by the vegetarians, is the vital ques- 
tion of the meat supply. Involved in the question of 
cattle is milk, leather, other products, and of course, 
meat itself. 

One German statistician told me he believed that 
the conquest of Eoumania would add between nine and 
ten months to Germany's capacity to hold out, during 
which time, no doubt, one or other of the Allies would 
succumb. 



I40 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

At the beginning of 191Y the actual number of cattle 
in Germany does not seem to be so greatly depreciated 
as one would expect. After a very thorough investiga- 
tion I am convinced that there are in Germany to-day 
from three-fourths to four-fifths as many head of cattle 
as there were before the war. 

In the spring and summer these cattle did very well, 
but with the passing of the grazing season new difficul- 
ties are arising. Cattle must be fed, and unless suffi- 
cient grain comes from Roumania to supply the bread 
for the people and the fodder for the cattle it is obvious 
that there must be a wholesale slaughtering, and con- 
sequent reduction of milk, butter, and cheese. 

All these details may seem tiresome, but they directly 
concern the length of the war. 

To add to the shortage, the present stock of cattle 
in Germany was, when I left, being largely drawn upon 
for the supply of the German armies in the occupied 
parts of France, Belgium, and Eussia, and the winter 
prospect for Germany, therefore, is one of obviously 
increased privation, provided always that the blockade 
is drastic. 

Cattle are, of course, not the only food supply. There 
is game. Venison is a much commoner food in Ger- 
many than in England, especially now there is much 
of it left. Hares, rabbits, partridges are in some parts 
of Germany much more numerous even than in Eng- 
land. A friend of mine recently arrived from Hungary 
told me that he had been present at a shoot over driven 
partridges at which, on three successive days, over 400 
brace fell to the guns. Wherever I went in Germany, 
however, game was being netted. 



IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET 141 

Before the war, pork, ham, and bacon were the most 
popular German food, but owing to the mistake of 
killing pigs in what I heard called the "pork panic" 
the Germans are to-day facing a remarkable shortage of 
their favourite meat. I am convinced that they began 
1917 with less than one-fourth as many pigs as they had 
before the war. 

The Berlin stockyards slaughtered over 25,000 pigs 
weekly before August, 1914. During the first 10 
months of the war the figure actually rose to 50,000 
pigs per week in that one city alone. In one 
week in September last the figure had fallen to 350 
pigs! 

The great slaughter early in the war gave a false 
optimism not only to Germans, but also to visitors. If 
you have the curiosity to look back at newspapers of that 
time you will find that the great plenty of pork was 
dilated upon by travelling neutrals. 

To-day the most tremendous efforts are being made 
to increase the number of pigs. You will not find much 
about this in the German newspapers — in fact what 
the German newspapers do not print is often more im- 
portant than what they do print. In the rural districts 
you can learn much more of Germany's food secrets 
than in the newspapers. 

In one small village which I went to I counted no 
fewer than thirty public notices on various topics. Here 
is one: — 

Fatten Pigs. 

Fat is an essential for sol- 
diers and hard workers. 
Not to keep and fatten pigs 



^ 



142 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

if you are able to do 
so is treason to the 
Fatherland. 
'No pen empty — every pen full. 

These food notices may be necessary, but they are 
bringing about intense class hatred in Germany. They 
are directed at the small farmer, who in many cases has 
killed all his pigs and most of his cows, because of his 
difficulty in getting fodder. As I have said, the great 
agrarian junkers, the wealthy landowners of Prussia, 
have in many cases more cows, more pigs, more poultry 
than before the war. 

The facts of these great disparities of life are well 
known, and if there were more individuality in the 
German character they would lead to something more 
serious than the very tame riots, at several of which I 
have been present. 

That the food question is the dooninating topic in 
Germany among all except the very rich, and that this 
winter will add to the intensity of the conversations on 
the subject, is not difficult to understand. Most of the 
shopping of the world is done by women, and the Ger- 
man woman of the middle class, whose maidservant 
has gone off to a munition factory, has to spend at least 
half her day waiting in a long line for potatoes, butter, 
or meat. 

There is a curious belief in England and in the 
United States in the perfection of German organisation. 
My experience of their organisation is that it is abso- 
lutely marvellous — when there are no unexpected diffi- 
culties in the way. When the Germans first put the 
nation on rations as to certain commodities, the outside 



IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET 143 

world said, "Ah, they are beginning to starve!" or 
"What wonderful organisers !" 

As a matter of fact, they were not beginning to starve, 
and they were not wonderful organisers. The rationing 
was done about as badly as it could be done. It was 
arranged in such a fashion as to produce plenty in some 
places and dearth in others. It was done so that wealthy 
men made fortunes and poor men were made still 
poorer. The inordinate greed and lack of real patriot- 
ism on the part of influential parties in both Germany 
and Austria-Hungary have added to the bad state of 
affairs. As if to make matters worse, the whole vast 
machine of rationing by ticket was based on the expecta- 
tion of a comparatively quick and decisive victory for 
Germany. This led to reckless consumption and a great 
rise in prices. The fight that is now going on between 
the masses in the towns and the wealthy land-owning 
farmers has been denounced in public by food dictator 
Batocki (pronounced Batoski), who, in words almost 
of despair, complained of the selfish landed proprietor, 
who would only disgorge to the suffering millions in 
the great manufacturing centres at a price greatly ex- 
ceeding that fixed by the food authorities. 

All manner of earnest public men are endeavouring 
to cope with the coming distress, and at this point I 
can do no better than quote from an interview given 
me by Dr. Siidekum, Social Democratic member of the 
Reichstag for l^uremberg, Bavaria. He is a sincere 
patriot, and a prominent worker in food organisation. 

"More than a year ago," he explained, "I worked 
out a plan for the distribution of food, which provided 
for uniform food-cards throughout the entire empire. 



144 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

For example, everyone, whether he lived in a Bavarian 
village or in a Prussian city, would receive, say, half 
a pound of meat a week. I presented my plan to the 
Government, with whose approval it met. llTeverthe- 
less, they did not see fit to adopt it for three reasons. 
In the first place because they believed that the people 
might become unnecessarily alarmed. Secondly, be- 
cause our enemies might make capital out of such 
measures. Thirdly, because our leaders at that time 
believed that the war might he over before the end of 
1915. 

"But the war dragged on, and we were somewhat 
extravagant with our supplies — I except bread, for 
which we introduced cards in February, 1915 — and 
instead of the whole Empire husbanding the distribu- 
tion of meat, for example, various sections here and 
there introduced purely local measures, with the inevi- 
table resulting confusion, 

"Hunger has been a cause of revolution in the past," 
Dr. Siidekum continued thoughtfully. "We should take 
lessons from history, and do everything in our power 
to provide for the poor. I have worked hard in the 
development of the 'People's Kitchens' in Berlin. We 
started in the suburbs early in 1916, in some great cen- 
tral kitchens in which we cook a nourishing meat and 
vegetable stew. From these kitchens distributing vehi- 
cles — Gulasch-hanonen (stew cannons) as they are jocu- 
larly called-^are sent through the city, and from them 
one may purchase enough for a meal at less than the 
cost of production. We haVe added a new central 
kitchen each week until we now have 30, each of which 
supplies 10,000 people a day with a meal, or, more 



IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET 145 

correctly, a meal and a half. In July, liowever, the 
work assumed greater proportions, for the municipal 
authorities also created great central kitchens. Most 
of the dinners are taken to the homes and eaten there. 

"The People's Kitchen idea is now spreading through- 
out Germany. But I believe in going further. I be- 
lieve in putting every German — I make no exception — 
upon rations. That is what is done in a besieged city, 
and our position is sufficiently analogous to a besieged 
city to warrant the same measures. All our food would 
then be available for equal distribution, and each person 
would get his allowance." 

This earnest Social Democrat's idea is, of course, 
perfect in theory. Even the able, hard-working Batocki, 
however, cannot make it practicable. Why not? The 
Agrarian^ the great Junher of Prussia, not only will 
not make sacrifices, but stubbornly insists upon wring- 
ing every pfennig of misery money from the nation 
which has boasted to the world that its patriotism was 
unselfish and unrivalled. 

The most important German crop of all at this 
juncture is potatoes, for potatoes are an integral part 
of German and Austrian bread. The handling of the 
crop, to which all Germany was looking forward so 
eagerly, exhibits in its most naked form the horrid pro- 
fiteering to which the German poor are being subjected 
by the German rich. 

It was a wet summer in Germany. Wherever I went 
in my rural excursions I heard that the potatoes were 
poor. The people in the towns knew little of this, and 
were told that the harvests were good. 

An abominable deception was practised upon the pub- 



146 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

lie with the first potato supply. Eor many months 
tickets had been in use for this food, which is called 
the "German staff of life." Suddenly ofiicial notices 
appeared that potatoes could be had for a few days 
without tickets, and the unsuspecting public at once 
ordered great quantities. 

The Agrarians thus got rid of all their bad potatoes to 
the mass of the people. In many cases they were 
rotting so fast that the purchaser had to bury them. 
It was found that they produced illness when given to 
swine. 

What other people in the, world than the Germans 
would stand that? But they did stand it. "These are 
only the early potattoes — the main crop will be all 
right," said the profiteers right and left, and gradually 
the masses began to echo them, as is usual in Germany. 

Well, the main crop has been gathered, and Food 
Dictator von Batocki is, according to the latest reports 
I hear from Germany, unable to make the Agrarians 
put their potatoes upon the market even at the maxi- 
mum price set by the Food Commission. 

They are holding back their supplies until they have 
forced up the maximum price, just as a year ago many 
of them allowed their potatoes to rot rather than sell 
them to the millions in the cities at the price set by 
law. 

Some Germans, mostly Social Democratic leaders, 
declare that since their country is in a state of siege, 
the Government should, beyond question, commandeer 
the supplies and distribute them, but just as the indus- 
trial classes have, until quite recently, resisted war 
taxes, so do the Prussian Junkers, by reason of their 



IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET i47 

power in the Reichstag, snap their fingers at any sug- 
gested fair laws for food distribution. 

The Burgomaster — usually a powerful person in 
Germany — is helpless. When on September 1 the great 
house-to-house inventory of food supplies was taken, 
burgomasters of the various sections of Greater Berlin 
took orders from the people for the whole winter supply 
of potatoes on special forms delivered at every house. 
Up to the time I left, the burgotmasters were unable 
to deliver the potatoes. 

Any dupes of German propaganda who imagine that 
there is much self-sacrifice among the wealthy class in 
Germany in this war should disabuse their minds of 
that theory at once. While the poor are being deprived 
of what they have, the purchases of pearls, diamonds, 
and other gems by the profiteers are on a scale never 
before known in Germany. 

One of the paradoxes of the situation, both in Austria 
and in Germany, is the coincidence of the great gold 
hunt, which is clearing out the trinkets of the humblest, 
with the roaring trade in jewelry in Berlin and Vienna. 
As an instance I can vouch for the veracity of the fol- 
lowing story : — 

A Berlin woman went to Werner's, the well-known 
jewellers in the Unter den Linden, and asked to be 
shown some pearl necklaces. After very little exam- 
ination she selected one that cost 40,000 marks 
(£2,000). The manager, who knew the purchaser as a 
regular customer for small articles of jewelry, ven- 
tured to express his surprise, remarking, "I well remem- 
ber, madam, that you have been coming here for many 
years, and that you have never bought anything ex- 
ceeding in value 100 marks. Naturally I am somewhat 



148 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

surprised at the purchase of this necklace." "Oh, it 
it very simple," she replied. "My husband is in the 
leather business, and our war profits have made us rich 
beyond our fondest hopes." 

Throughout Austria and Germany in every village 
and townlet are appearing notices to bring in gold. 
The following notice is to be met with in all parts of 
Germany ; — 

Let Evekt One Worthy of the ISTame of 
Geeman do his Duty now. 

Our enemies, after realising that they cannot de- 
feat us on the field of battle, are striving to defeat 
us economically. But here they will also fail. 
Out with your Gold. 

Out with your gold ! What is the value of a trinket 
to the life of the dear one that gave it ? By giving 
now you may save the life of a husband, brother, or 
son. 

Bring your gold to the places designated below. 

If the value of the gold you bring exceeds five 
marks, you will receive an iron memento of "Die 
grosse Zeit." 

Iron chains will be given for gold chains. 

Wedding rings of those still living will not he ac- 
cepted. 

Erom rural pulpits is preached the wickedness of 
retaining gold which might purchase food for the man 
in the trenches. 

The precedent of the historic great ladies of Prussia 
who exchanged their golden Avedding rings for rings 
of iron is drummed into the smaller folk continuously. 
The example is being followed by the exchange of gold 
trinkets for trinkets made of iron^ with the addition of 



IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET 149 

the price paid at the central collecting station — paid, of 
course, in paper, which is at a 30 per cent, discount in 
Germany and 47 per cent, discount in Austria. Every 
hringer of a trinket worth more than 5s. receives a 
small iron token of "die grosse Zeit" (the great epoch). 

The gold hunt has revealed unexpected possessions in 
the hands of the German and Austrian lower classes. 
To me it was pathetic to see an old woman tremblingly 
handing over treasures that had come down probably for 
two or three generations — treasures that had never been 
worn except on high days and festivals, weddings, and 
perhaps on the day of the local fair. Particularly sad 
is this self-sacrifice in view of the gigantic profits of the 
food usurers and war profiteers. The matter is no 
secret in Germany or Austria. It is denounced by the 
small Socialist minority in the Reichstag, to whose 
impotence I have often referred. It is stoutly defended 
in good Prussian fashion by those openly making the 
profits. 

There has arisen a one-sided Socialism which no one 
but Bismarck's famous "nation of lackeys" would 
tolerate. At the top is a narrow circle of agrarian and 
industrial profiteers, often belonging to the aristocratic 
classes. At the other end of the scale is, for example, 
the small farmer, who has now absolutely nothing to say 
concerning either the planting, the marketing, or the 
selling of his crops. Regulations are laid down as to 
what he should sow, where he should sell, and the price 
at which he should sell. Unlike the Junker, he has not 
a long purse. He must sell. 

What state of mind does this produce among the 
people ? I know that outside Germany there is an idea 



ISO THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

that every German is working at top speed with the 
spirit of the Fatherland flaming him on. That was the 
spirit I witnessed in the early days of the war, when 
Germany was winning and food was plentiful. 

In certain rural districts as well as in centres of 
population there is an intense longing for peace — ^not 
merely for a German peace — ^but any peace, and a peace 
not merely for military reasons, but arising out of 
utter weariness of the rule of the profiteers and the cas- 
ualties not revealed by the doctored lists — ingeniously 
issued lists, which, for example, have never revealed 
the loss of a submarine crew, though intelligent Ham- 
burg shipping people, who are in close touch with Ger- 
man naval people, estimate the loss of German 
submarines as at least one hundred. I have heard the 
figure put higher, and also lower. 

This kind of one-sided Socialism makes the people so 
apathetic that in some parts of Germany it has been 
very difficult to induce them to harvest their own crops, 
and in German Poland they have been forced to garner 
the fields at the point of the bayonet. 

When a man has no interest in the planting, market- 
ing, and selling price of his produce; when he knows 
that what he grows may be swept away from his dis- 
trict without being sure that it will be of any benfit to 
himself and his family ; when, in addition, the father or 
sons of the households lie buried by the Yser, the 
Somme, the Mouse or the Drina, it is impossible for the 
authorities to inspire any enthusiasm for life, let alone 
war, even among so docile a people as those they deal 
with. 



IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET 151 

With regard to the other crops, rye is good ; beets look 
good, but are believed to be deficient in sugar owing to 
the absence of South American fertilisers; wheat is 
fairly good; oats extremely good, and barley also ex- 
cellent. The Germans have boasted to the neutral vis- 
itor that their artificial nitrates are just as good fertili- 
sers as those imported from South America. It is true 
that they do very well for most crops when the weather 
is damp. But beets, strangely enough, require the gen- 
uine Chilean saltpetre to produce their maximum of 
sugar. The failure to get this, plus the use of sugar 
in munition making, accounts for the dearth of that 
commodity among the civilian population. 

In order that nothing shall be wasted, the Govern- 
ment decreed this year that the public should be allowed 
to scavenge the fields after the harvest had been 
gathered, and this was a source of some benefit to those 
residing near the great centres of population. 

Schoolmasters were also ordered to teach the children 
the need of gathering every sort of berry and nut. 

Passing along an English hedgerow the other day, 
and seeing it still covered with withered blackberries, 
I compared them with the bare brambles which I saw 
in Germany from which all berries have gone to help 
the great jam-making business which is to eke out the 
gradually decreasing butter and margarine supply. 
Sickness and death have resulted from mistakes made, 
not only in gathering berries, but in gathering mush- 
rooms and other fungi, which have been keenly sought. 

It is safe to say that the Germans are leaving no 
stone unturned to avoid the starvation of the Seven 
Years' War. The ingenuity of the chemists in produc- 



1 5 2 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

ing substitutes was never greater. One of tlie most 
disagreeable foods I have tasted veas bread made of 
straw. Countless experiments have been made in the 
last year to adapt straw to the human stomach, but 
although something resembling bread has been pro- 
duced, it contains almost no nourishment and results in 
illness. 

People who reside in the cities and carefully shep- 
herded visiting neutrals, who do not go into the country, 
have little notion of the terrific effort being put forward 
to make the fruits of Mother Earth defeat the blockade, 
and ahove all to extract any kind of oil from anything 
that grows. 

Here is one notice: — 

How THE Civil Population Can Help in the Wae. 

Our enemies are trying to exhaust us, but they 

cannot succeed if every one 

does his duty. 

Oil is a Necessity. 

You can help the Fatherland if you plant 

poppies, castor plant, sunflowers. 
In addition to doing important work for 
the Fatherland you benefit yourself be- 
cause the price for oil is high* 

I may say that the populace have responded. iN'ever 
have I seen such vast fields of poppies, sunflowers, rape 
plant, and other oleaginous crops. Oil has been ex- 
tracted from plum-stones, cherry-stones, and walnuts. 

The Government have not pleased the people even in 
this matter. One glorious summer day, after tramp- 
ing alone the sandy roads of Southern Brandenburg, 
I came to a little red-brick village in the midst of its 



IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET 153 

sea of waving rye and blaze of sunflowers and poppies. 
Taking my seat at the long table in front of the local 
Gasthaus, and ordering some imitation coffee — the only- 
refreshment provided in the absence of a local bread 
ticket — ^I pointed out one of these notices to the only 
other person at the table, who was drinking some "ex- 
traordinarily weak beer," as he put it. "Have the peo- 
ple here planted much of these things I see on that 
notice?" I asked, pointing to one of the placards. 
"Yes," he said, "certainly. A great deal ; but the Gov- 
ernment is going to be false to us again. It will be 
commandeered at a price which they have already set." 
Then came the usual string of grumbles which one hears 
everywhere in the agricultural districts. I will not 
repeat them. They all have to do with the food short- 
age, profiteering, and discontent at the length of the 
war. 

Though all Germans, with the exception of a few 
profiteers, are grumbling at the length of the war, it 
must not be supposed that they have lost hope. In fact 
their grumblings are punctuated frequently by very 
bright hopes. When Douaumont fell, food troubles 
were forgotten. The bells rang, the flags were unfurled, 
faces brightened, crowds gathered before the maps and 
discussed the early fall of Verdun and the collapse of 
France. Again I heard on every hand the echo of the 
boasts of the first year of the war. 

The glorious manner in which France hurled back 
the assault was making itself felt in Germany with a 
consequent depression over food shortage when the 
greatest naval victory in history — so we gathered, at 
least, from the first German reports — raised the spirits 



1 54 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

and hopes of the people so high that they fully believed 
that the blockade had been smashed. On the third day 
of the celebration, Saturday, June 3rd, I rode in a tram 
from Wilmersdorf, a suburb of Berlin, to the heart of 
the city through miles of streets flaring with a solid 
mass of colour. From nearly every window and bal- 
cony hung pennants and flags; on every trolley pole 
fluttered a pennant of red, white and black. Even the 
ancient horse 'buses rattled through the streets with the 
flags of Germany and her allies on each corner of the 
roof. The newspapers screamed headlines of triumph, 
nobody could settle down to business, the faces one 
met were wreathed in smiles, complaining was for- 
gotten, the assurance of final victory was in the very 
air. 

Unter den Linden, the decorations on which were so 
thick that in many cases they screened the buildings 
from which they hung, was particularly happy. Knots 
of excited men stood discussing the defeat of the British 
Fleet. Two American friends and I went from the 
street of happy and confident talk into the Zollernhof 
Restaurant. With the din of the celebration over the 
"lifting of the blockade" ringing in our ears from the 
street, we looked on the bill of fare, and there, for the 
first time, we saw Boiled Crow. 

Through the spring and early summer the people 
were officially buoyed up with the hope that the new 
harvest would make an end of their troubles. They 
had many reasons, it is true, to expect an improvement. 
The 1915 harvest in Germany had fallen below the 
average. Therefore, if the 1916 harvest would be bet- 
ter per acre, the additional supplies from the conquered 



IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET 155 

regions of Russia would enable Germany to laugh at 
the efforts of her enemies to starve her out. Once more, 
however, ojBficial assurances and predictions were wrong, 
and the economic condition grew worse through every 
month of 1916. 



CHAPTEE XIII 

A LAND OF SUBSTITUTES 

THE only food substitute which meets the casual eye 
of the visitor to England in war time is margarine 
for butter. Germany, on the contrary, is a land of 
substitutes. 

Since the war, food exhibitions in various cities, but 
more especially in Berlin, have had as one of their most 
prominent features booths where you could sample sub- 
stitutes for coffee, yeast, eggs, butter, olive oil, and the 
like. Undoubtedly many of these substitutes are des- 
tined to take their place in the future alongside some of 
the products for which they are rendering vicarious 
service. In fact, in a "Proclamation touching the Pro- 
tection of Inventions, Designs, and Trade Marks in the 
Exhibition of Substitute-Materials in Berlin-Charlot- 
tenburg, 1916," it is provided that the substitutes to be 
exhibited shall enjoy the protection of the Law. Even 
before the war, substitutes like Kathreiner's malt coffee 
were household words, whilst the roasting of acorns for 
admixture with coffee was not only a usual practice on 
the part of some families in the lower middle class, but 
was so generally recognised among the humbler folk 
that the children of poor families were given special 
printed permissions by the police to gather acorns for 
the purpose on the sacred grass of the public parks. 

To deal with meat which in other countries would 

156 



A LAND OF SUBSTITUTES 157 

be regarded as unfit for human consumption there have 
long been special appliances in regular use in peace 
time. The so-called FreihanJc was a State or municipal 
butcher's shop attached to the extensive municipal 
abattoirs in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, and elsewhere. 
Here tainted meat, or meat from animals locally 
affected by disease, is specially treated by a steam pro- 
cess and other methods, so as to free it from all danger 
to health. Meat so treated does not, of course, have the 
nutritive value of ordinary fresh meat, but the Ger- 
mans acted on the principle that anything was better 
than nothing. Such meat was described as hedingt 
tauglich (that is, fit for consumption under reserve). 
It was sold before the war at very low rates to the poorer 
population, who in times of scarcity came great dis- 
tances and kept long vigils outside the FreibanTc, to be 
near the head of the queue when the sale began. Thus 
we see that many Germans long ago acquired the habit 
of standing in line for food, which is such a characteris- 
tic of German city life to-day. 

Horseflesh was consumed before the war in Germany, 
as in Belgium and France. Its sale was carefully con- 
trolled by the police, and severe punishment fell upon 
anyone who tried to disguise its character. An ordi- 
nary butcher might not sell it at all. He had to be 
specially licensed, and to maintain a special establish- 
ment or a special branch of his business for the purpose. 
Thus, when wider circles of the population were driven 
to resort to substitutes, there was already in existence 
a State-organised system to control the output. 

Since the war began, sausage has served as a German 
stand-by from the time that beef and pork became diffi- 



1 5 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

cult to obtain. In the late spring, however, the in- 
creased demand for sausage made that also more 
difficut to procure, and we often got a substitute full of 
breadcrumbs, which made the food-value of this par- 
ticular Wurst considerably less than its size would 
indicate. It was frequently so soft that it was practi- 
cally impossible to cut, and we had to spread it on our 
bread like butter. 

The substitute of which the world has read the most 
is war bread. This differs in various localities, but it 
consists chiefly of a mixture of rye and potato with a 
little wheat flour. In Hungary, which is a great maize- 
growing country, maize is substituted for rye. 

Imitation tea is made of plum and other leaves 
boiled in real tea and dried. 

To turn to substitutes other than food, it will be 
recalled that Germany very early began to popularise 
the use of benzol as an alternative to petrol for motor 
engines. This was a natural outgrowth of her mar- 
vellously developed coal-tar industry, of which benzol 
is a product. Prizes for the most effective benzol- 
consuming engine, for benzol carburettors, etc., have 
been offered by various oflicial departments in recent 
years, and I am told that during the war ingenious in- 
ventions for the more satisfactory employment of benzol 
have been adopted. Owing to the increased use of pota- 
toes as food, the alcoholic extract from them, always a 
great German and Austro-Hungarian industry, has had 
to be restricted. 

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, as I learned 
from the owner of a little general shop in a Branden- 
burg village. He told me that about twenty-five years 



A LAND OF SUBSTITUTES 159 

ago, when kerosene became widely used in the village 
for illuminating purposes, he was left with a tremendous 
supply of candles which he could never sell. The oil 
famine has caused the substitution of candle light for 
lamp light during the war, and has enabled him to sell 
out the whole stock at inflated prices. All oils are at a 
premium. The price of castor-oil has risen fivefold in 
Germany, chiefly owing to the fact that it is being 
extensively used for aeroplane and other lubrication 
purposes. 

But it is oil from which explosives are derived that 
chiefly interests Germany. Almost any kind of fruit 
stone contains glycerine. That is why notices have 
been put on all trains which run through fruit districts, 
such as Werder, near Berlin, and Baden, advising the 
people to save their fruit stones and bring them to 
special depots for collection. 

Five pounds of fat treated with caustic soda can be 
made to yield one pound of glycerine. This is one 
reason, in addition to the British blockade, which causes 
the great fat shortage among the civil population. 

Glycerine united with ammonium nitrate is used in 
the manufacture of explosives. Deprived of nitrogenous 
material from South America, Germany has greatly 
developed the process for the manufacture of artificial 
nitrates. She spent £25,000,000 after the outbreak of 
war to enable her chemists and engineers to turn out a 
sufficient amount of nitric acid. 

Toluol, a very important ingredient of explosives, is 
obtained from coal-tar, which Germany is naturally 
able to manufacture at present better than any other 
country in the world, since she had practically a mon- 



1 60 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

opolj in coal-tar products before hostilities commenced. 

Evidently, however, substitutes to reinforce goods 
smuggled through the blockade have not sufficed to meet 
the chemical demands of the German Government, for 
great flaming placards were posted up all over the Em- 
pire announcing the commandeering of such commodi- 
ties as sulphur, sulphuric acid, toluol, saltpetre, and the 
like. 

Germany long ago claimed to have perfected wood- 
pulp as a substitute for cotton in propulsive ammuni- 
tion. She made this claim very early, however, for the 
(purpose of hoodwinking British blockade ^advocates. 
Her great need eventually led her to take steps to induce 
the United States to insist on the Entente Powers rais- 
ing the blockade on cotton. She went to great trouble 
and expense to send samples by special means to her 
agents in America. 

The cotton shortage began to be seriously felt early in 
1916 in the manufacturing districts of Saxony, where 
so many operatives were suddenly thrown out of work 
that the Government had to set aside a special fund for 
their temporary relief, until they could be transferred to 
other war industries. 

The success which Germany claimed for a cotton- 
cloth substitute has been greatly exaggerated. When 
the Germans realised that Great Britain really meant 
business on the question of cotton they cultivated nettle 
and willow fibre, and made a cloth consisting for the 
most part of nettle or willow fibre with a small propor- 
tion of cotton or wool. 

It was boasted in many quarters that the exclusion 
of cotton would make but little difference so far as 



A LAND OF SUBSTITUTES i6i 

clothing was concerned. ]!^ot only does the universal 
introduction of clothing tickets falsify this boast, but 
the cloth is found to be a mere makeshift when tested. 
Blouses and stockings wear out with discouraging rapid- 
ity when made of the substitute. 

My personal investigations still lead me to believe 
in the motto of the Sunny South that : "Cotton is king." 

Paper, although running short in Germany, is the 
substitute for cloth in many cases. Sacking, formerly 
used for making bags in which to ship potatoes and 
other vegetables, has given way to it. Paper-string is 
a good substitute widely used, although "no string" was 
the verbal substitute I often got when buying various 
articles, and it was necessary for me to hold the paper 
on to the parcel with my hands. 

The craze for substitutes has spread so extensively 
that there have been some unpleasant results both for 
the purchaser and the producer, as was the case with 
several bakers, who were finally detected and convicted 
of a liberal use of sawdust in their cakes. 

Germany has worked especially hard to find a sub- 
stitute for indiarubber, though with only moderate 
success. I know that the Kaiser's Government is still 
sending men into contiguous neutral countries to buy up 
every scrap of rubber obtainable. In no other com- 
modity has there been more relentless commandeering. 
When bicycle tyres were commandeered — the authori- 
ties deciding that three marks was the proper price to 
pay for a new pair of tyres which had cost ten — there 
was a great deal of complaining. l!Tevertheless, without 
an excellent reason, no German could secure the police 
pass necessary to allow him to ride a bicycle. Those 



1 62 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

who did obtain permission to ride to and from their 
work had to select the shortest route, and "joy-riding" 
was forbidden. 

"Substitute rubber" heels for boots could be readily 
obtained until the late summer, but after that only with 
difficulty. They were practically worthless, as I know 
from personal experience, and were as hard as leather 
after one or two days' use. 

Despite the rubber shortage, the Lower Saxon Rubber 
Company, of Hildersheim, does a thriving business in 
raincoats made from rubber substitutes. The factory 
is running almost full blast, all the work being done by 
women, and the finished product is a tribute to the skill 
of those in charge. 

It is impossible to buy a real tennis ball in the Ger- 
man Empire to-day. A most hopeless makeshift ball 
has been put on the market, but after a few minutes' 
play it no longer keeps its shape or resiliency. 

Germany has been very successful in the substitution 
of a sort of enamelled-iron for aluminium, brass, and 
copper. Some of the Rhenish- Westphalian iron indus- 
tries have made enormous war profits, supplying iron 
chandeliers, stove doors, pots and pans, and other 
articles formerly made of brass to take the place of 
those commandeered for the purpose of supplying the 
Army with much-needed metals. 

Eor copper used in electrical and other industries 
she claims to have devised substitutes before the war, 
and her experts now assert that a two-years' supply of 
copper and brass has been gathered from the kitchens 
and roofs of Germany. The copper quest has assumed 
such proportions that the roof of the historic, world- 



A LAND OF SUBSTITUTES 163 

renowned Rathaus at Bremen has been stripped. Nearly 
half the church bells of Austria have found their way 
to the great Skoda Works. ' 

Of course Germans never boast of the priceless orna- 
ments they have stolen from Belgium and JS^orthern 
France. They joyfully claim that every pound of cop- 
per made available at home diminishes the amount 
which they must import from abroad, and pay for with 
their cherished gold. 

The authorities delight in telling the neutral visitors 
that they have found adequate substitutes for nickel, 
chromium, and vanadium for the hardening of steel. If 
that is really so, why does the Deutschland's cargo con- 
sist mainly of these three commodities ? 



CHAPTEE XIV 

THE GAGGHiTG OP LIEBKNECHT 

ALTHOUGH Bismarck gave the Germans a Constitu- 
tion and a Parliament after the Franco-Prussian 
War as a sop for their sacrifices in that campaign, he 
never intended the Eeichstag to be a Parliament in the 
sense in which the institution is understood in Great 
Britain. 

What Bismarck gave the Germans was a debating so- 
ciety and a safety-valve. They needed a place to air 
their theories and ventilate their grievances. But the 
Chancellor of Iron was very careful, in drawing up the 
plans for the "debating society," to see that it con- 
ferred little more real power on the nation's "represen- 
tatives" than is enjoyed by the stump-speakers near 
Marble Arch in London on Sundays. 

Many people in England and the United States of 
America, I find, do not at all understand the meaning- 
lessness of German Parliamentary proceedings. When 
they read about "stormy sittings" of the Reichstag and 
"bitter criticism" of the Chancellor, they judge such 
things as they judge similar events in the House of 
Commons or the American House of Representatives. 
JSTothing could be more inaccurate. Governments do 
not fall in Germany in consequence of adverse Reich- 
stag votes, as they do in England. They are not the 
people's Governments, but merely the Kaiser's crea- 
tures. They rise and fall by his grace alone. 

164 



THE GAGGING OF LIEBKNECHT 165 

Even this state of affairs needs to be qualified and 
explained to the citizens of free countries. The Gov- 
ernment is not a Cabinet or a Ministry. 

The German Government is a one-man affair. It 
consists of the Imperial Chancellor. He, and nobody 
else, is the "Government," subject only to the All- 
Highest will of the Emperor, whose bidding the Chan- 
cellor is required to do. 

The Chancellor, in the name of the "Government," 
brings in Bills to be passed by the Reichstag. If the 
Reichstag does not like a Bill, which sometimes hap- 
pens, it refuses to give it a majority. But the "Gov- 
ernment" does not fall. It can simply, as it has done 
on numerous occasions, dissolve the Reichstag, order a 
General Election, and heep on doing so indefinitely^ 
until it gets exactly the kind of "Parliament" it wants. 
Thus, though the Reichstag votes on financial matters, 
it can be made to vote as the "Government" wishes. 

As I have said, the Reichstag was invented to be, and 
has alwa.ys served the purpose hitherto of, a forum in 
which discontented Germany could blow off steam, but 
achieve little in the way of remedy or reform. But 
during the war the Reichstag has even ceased to he a 
place where free speech is tolerated. It has been gagged 
as effectually as the German Press. I was an eye- 
witness of one of the most drastic muzzling episodes 
which has occurred in the Reichstag during the war — 
or probably in the history of any modern Parliament — 
the suppression of Dr. Karl Liebknecht, member for 
Potsdam, during the debate on military affairs on Jan- 
uary 17, 1916. That event will be of historic im- 
portance in establishing how public opinion in Germany 



1 66 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

during the war lias been ruthlessly trampled under foot. 

The Reichstag has practically nothing to do with the 
conduct of the war. 

Up, practically, to the beginning of 1916 the sporadic 
Social Democratic opposition to the war, mainly by Dr. 
Liebknecht, was ignored by the Government. The war- 
machine was running so smoothly, and, from the Ger- 
man standpoint, so victoriously, that the Government 
thought it could safely let Liebknecht rant to his heart's 
content. 

Dr. Liebknecht had long been a thorn in the War 
Party's side. He inherited an animosity to Prussian 
militarism from his late father. Dr. Wilhelm Lieb- 
knecht, who with August Bebel founded the modern 
German Social Democratic Party. Four or five years 
before the war Liebknecht, a lawyer by profession, cam- 
paigned so fiercely against militarism that he was 
sentenced to eighteen months' fortress imprisonment 
for "sedition." He served his sentence, and soon after- 
wards his political friends nominated him for the 
Reichstag for the Royal Division of Potsdam, of all 
places in the world, knowing that such a candidature 
would be as ironical a blow as could be dealt to the war 
aristocrats. He was elected by a big majority in 1912, 
the votes of the large working-class population of the 
division, including Spandau (the Prussian Woolwich), 
being more than enough to offset the military vote which 
the Kaiser's henchmen mobilised against him. Some 
time afterwards Liebknecht was also elected to represent 
a Berlin Labour constituency in the Prussian Diet, the 
Legislature which deals with the affairs in the Kingdom 
of Prussia, as distinct from the Reichstag (the Imperial 



THE GAGGING OF LIEBKNECHT 167 

Diet), which concerns itself with Empire matters 
only. 

Dr. Liebknecht is forty-four years old. Of medium 
build, he wears a shock of long, curly, upstanding hair, 
which rather accentuates his "agitator" type of 
countenance, and is a skilful and eloquent debater. A 
university graduate and well-read thinker and student, 
he turned out to be the one consistent Social Demo- 
cratic politician in Germany on the question of the war. 
When the war began the Socialist Party was effectually 
and willingly tied to the Government's chariot — includ- 
ing, nominally, even Liebknecht. A few hours before 
making his notorious "I^ecessity-knows-no-law" speech 
in the Eeichstag on August 4, 1914, Bethmann-HoUweg 
coiiferred with all the Parliamentary parties, and con- 
vinced them (including the Socialists) that Germany 
had been cruelly dragged into a war of defence. Later 
in the day, following other party leaders, Herr Haase, 
spokesman for the Socialists, got up in the House, 
voiced a few harmless platitudes about Socialist opposi- 
tion to war on principle, and then pledged the party's 
111 votes solidly to the War Credits for which the Gov- 
ernment was asking. When the Chancellor afterwards 
made his celebrated speech it was cheered to the echo by 
the entire House, including the Socialists. I do not 
know whether Liebknecht was present, though he is 
almost certain to have been, but if so he made no note- 
worthy protest. How completely the Government 
befooled the Socialists about the war was proved a few 
days later when Dr. Eranck, one of the Social Dem- 
ocracy's most shining lights and the man who was in 
line to be Bebel's successor, volunteered for military 



1 68 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

service. He was one of the first to fall fighting in Sep- 
tember, somewhere irr the West. 

The authorities might have known that Liebknecht 
was a hard man to keep quiet if he ever decided to speak 
out. Fresh in the Government's mind was his bold 
exposure of the Krupp bribery scandals at the War 
Office (in 1913) and his disclosures about how the 
German munition trust for years systematically stirred 
up war fever abroad, in order to convince the German 
people of the necessity of speeding up their own huge 
armaments on land and sea. As soon as Liebknecht's 
Reichstag and Prussian Diet speeches began to show 
that he was tired of the muzzle, the Government called 
him up for military service. They stuck him into the 
uniform of an Armierungssoldat (Army Service Corps 
soldier). This meant that his public speeches in con- 
nection with the war had to be confined to the two 
Parliaments in which he held seats. Anything of an 
opposition character which he said or did outside would 
be "treason" or "sedition." 

Liebknecht was put to work on A.S.C. jobs behind the 
fronts alternately in the East and West, I believe, but 
was given leaves of absence to attend to his Parlia- 
mentary duties from time to time. On these occasions 
he would appear in the Reichstag in the dull field-grey 
of an ordinary private — the only member so clad in a 
House of 397 Deputies, among whom are dozens of 
officers in uniform up to the rank of generals. 

I was particularly fortunate to be able to secure a 
card of admission to the Strangers' Gallery of the 
Reichstag on January 17, the day set for discussion of 
military matters. I went to my place early — a few 



THE GAGGING OF LIEBKNECHT 169 

minutes past the noon hour, as the Reichstag usually 
convenes at 1 p.m. The floor was still quite empty, 
though the galleries were filled with people anxious, like 
myself, to see the show from start to finish. 

The Reichstag's decorative scheme is panelled oak 
and gilt-paint. The members' seating space spreads 
fanlike round the floor, with individual seats and desks 
exactly like those used by schoolboys, which is not an 
inappropriate simile. On the extreme right are the 
places of the Conservative-Junker — landowners — 
Party ; to their left sit, in succession, the Roman Catho- 
lic Clericals (who occupy the exact centre of the floor 
and are thus known as the Zentrum, or Centre Party). 
The "Centre" includes many priests, mostly Rhine- 
landers and Bavarians. Then come the ISTational 
Liberals, the violently anti-British and anti-American 
Party, the Progressive People's Party, and the Social 
Democrats. The latter are on the "extreme left." That 
is why they are often so described in reports of Reich- 
stag proceedings abroad. The Socialists comprise 111 
out of 397 members of the House, so their segment of 
the fan is the largest of all. IsText in size is the Centre 
Party, with eighty-five or ninety seats, the Conserva- 
tives, l^ational Liberals, and Progressives accounting 
for the rest of the floor in more or less equal propor- 
tions. 

The outstanding aspect of the Reichstag is the 
tribune for speakers, which faces the floor and is ele- 
vated above it some five or six feet. It is flanked on the 
right by the Government "table," consisting of indi- 
vidual seats and desks for Ministers. In the centre of 
the tribune the presiding ofiicer, who is "President," not 



1 70 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Speaker, of the House, sits. On his left is a row of 
seats and desks, like the opposite Government "table," 
for the members of the Federal Council. The Federal 
Council, I may remind my readers, consists of the 
delegates of the various States of Germany. They are 
not elected by the people, but are appointed by the rulers 
of the several States. They constitute practically an 
Imperial Upper Chamber, and are the real legislative 
body of the Empire. Bills require the Federal Coun- 
cil's approval before submission to the Reichstag, 

On so-called "big days" in the Reichstag a host of 
small fry from the Departments collects behind the Gov- 
ernment and this dominent Federal Council. The 
Chancellor, whose place is at the corner of the Govern- 
ment "table" nearest the President, is always shep- 
herded by his political aide-de-camp, Dr. Wahnschaffe. 
There is always a group of uniformed Army and ^N'avy 
officers on the tribune, too, and to-day, of course, as the 
Army discussions were on the agenda, there was an 
unusually brave array of gold braid and brass buttons. 
Herr von Oldenburg, a prominent Junker M.P., once 
said if he were the Kaiser he would send a Prussian 
lieutenant and ten men to close up the Reichstag. 

Liebknecht arrived early, a slight and unimpressive 
figure in somewhat worn field-grey, the German khaki. 
The "debate" having begun, I noticed how he listened 
eagerl}'' to every word spoken, jotting down notes in- 
cessantly for the evident purpose of replying to the 
grandiloquent utterances about our "glorious army of 
KuUur-hesLrers" which were falling from the lips of 
"patriotic" party orators. Liebknecht had earned the 
displeasure of the House a few days before by asking 



THE GAGGING OF LIEBKNECHT 171 

some embarrassing questions about Turkish massacres 
in Armenia. He was jerred and laughed at hilariously 
when he went on to say that a "Black Chamber^* was 
spying on his every movement, shadowing other mem- 
bers of the Eeichstag, even eavesdropping on their tele- 
phone conversations and opening their private corre- 
spondence. 

While a Socialist comrade, Herr Davidssohn, was 
speaking from the desk in the centre of the tribune, at 
which all members must stand when addressing the 
House, I now saw Liebknecht walking up the aisle 
leading from the Socialist seats to the President's chair 
as unobtrusively as possible. He was walking furtively 
and he cut the figure of a hunted animal which is con- 
scious that it is surrounded by other animals anxious 
to pounce upon it and devour it if it dares to show itself 
in the open. 

Liebknecht has now reached the President's side. 
The President, a long-whiskered septuagenarian, is pop- 
ularly known as "Papa" Kaempf. I see Liebknecht 
whispering quietly in Kaempf 's ear. He is asking for 
permission to speak, probably as soon as comrade 
Davidssohn has finished making his innocuous sugges- 
tions of minor reforms to relieve discomforts in the 
trenches. Kaempf is shaking his head negatively. As 
the official executor of the House's wishes, the old man 
understands perfectly well that Liebknecht must under 
no circumstances have a hearing. Davidssohn has now 
stopped talking. Liebknecht has meantime reached the 
bottom step of the stairway of five or six steps leading 
from the tribune to the level of the floor. He can be 
plainly seen from all sections of the House. I hear him 



172 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

start to say that he has a double right to be heard on 
the Army Bill, not only as a member of the House, but 
as a soldier. He gets no further. The Chamber is 
already filled with shouts and jeers. "Maul halten!" 
(shut your mouth!) bursts from a dozen places in the 
Conservative and National Liberal and Centre benches. 
" 'Raus mit ihm!" (throw him out!) is another angry 
taunt which I can distinguish in the bedlam. Lieb- 
knecht has been howled down many times before under 
similar circumstances. He is not terrified to-day, 
though his face is pale with excitement and anger. He 
stands his ground. His right arm is extended, a finger 
levelled accusingly at the Right and Centre from which 
imprecations, unceasingly, are being snarled at him. 
But he cannot make himself heard amid the 
uproar. 

A Socialist colleague intervenes, Ledebour, a thin, 
grey-haired, actor-like person, of ascetic mien and reso- 
nant voice. "Checking free speech is an evil custom 
of this House," declares Ledebour. "Papa" Kaempf 
clangs his big hand-bell. He rules out "such improper 
expressions as ^evil custom' in this high House." Lede- 
bour is the Reichstag's master of repartee. He rejoins 
smilingly: — "Very well, not an ^evil custom,' but not 
altogether a pleasant custom." IsTow the House is howl- 
ing Ledebour down. He, too, has weathered such 
storms before. He waits, impassive and undismayed, 
for a lull in the cyclone. It comes. "Wait, wait !" he 
thunders. "My friend Liebknecht and I, and others like 
us, have a great following. You grievously underes- 
timate that following. Some day you will realise i^hat. 
Wait " Ledebour, like Liebknecht, can no longer 



THE GAGGING OF LIEBKNECHT i73 

proceed. The House is now boiling, an indistinguish- 
able and most undignified pandemonium. I can detect 
that there is considerable ironical laughter mixed with 
its indignation. Members are not taking Ledebour's 
threat seriously. 

Liebknecht has temporarily returned to his seat 
under cover of the tornado provoked by Ledebour's in- 
tervention, but now I see him stealthily crawling, dodg- 
ing, almost panther-like, back to the steps of the tribune. 
He is bent upon renewing the attempt to raise his voice 
above the hovStile din. The sight of him unchains the 
House's fury afresh. The racket is increased by the 
mad ding-donging of "Papa" Kaempf, trying hopelessly 
to restore a semblance of quiet. It is useless. The 
House will not subside until Liebknecht is driven from 
the speakers' tribune. He is not to have even the chance 
of the lull which enabled Ledebour to say a pertinent 
thing or two. A score of embittered deputies advance 
toward the tribune, red-faced and gesticulating in the 
German way when excitement is the dominant passion. 
Their fists are clenched. I say to myself that Lieb- 
knecht will this time be beaten down, if he is not con- 
tent to be shouted down. He makes an unforgettable 
figure, alone there, assailed, barked and snarled at from 
every side, a private in the German Army bidding 
defiance to a hundred men, also in uniform, but superior 
officers. Mere Kanonenfutter (cannon fodder) defying 
the majestic authority of its helmeted and epauletted 
overlords ! An unprecedented episode, as well as an un- 
forgettable one. 

Liebknecht insists upon tempting fate once more. He 
is going to try to outshout the crazy chorus howling 



1 74 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

at him. He succeeds, but only for an instant and to the 
extent of one biting phrase: — "Such treatment," I can 
hear him shrieking, "is unverscJiaemt (shameless) and 
unerhoert (unheard of) ! It could take place in no 
other legislative body in the world !" 

With that the one German Social Democrat of con- 
viction, courage, and consistency retires, baffled and dis- 
comfited. Potsdam's representative in the Reichstag is 
at last effectually muzzled, but in the muzzling I have 
seen the German Government at work on a task almost 
as prodigious as the one it now faces on the Somme — 
the task of keeping the German people deaf, dumb, and 
blind. 

Of what has meantime happened to Liebknecht the 
main facts are kno\\Ti. He was arrested on May 1 for 
alleged "incitement to public disorder during a state of 
war," tried, convicted, and sentenced to penal servitude. 
A couple of months previously (on March 13) he had 
delivered another bitter attack on the War Government 
in the Prussian Diet. He accused the German educa- 
tional authorities of systematically teaching hate to 
school children and of distorting even contemporary his- 
tory so as to poison their minds to the glorification of 
Prussian militarism. He said it was not the business 
of the schools to turn children into machines for the 
Moloch of militarism. 

"Let us teach history correctly/' declared Liebknecht, 
"and tell the children that the crime of Sarajevo was 
looTced upon hy wide circles in Austria-Hungary and 
Germany as a gift from Heaven. Let us " 

He got no farther, for the cyclone broke. He had 
dared to do what no other man in Germany had done. 



THE GAGGING OF LIEBKNECHT i75 

He had publicly accused his Governnient of making the 
war. From that moment his doom was certain. 

This narrative should be instructive to those Brit- 
ishers and Americans who think it possible that German 
Socialists may one day have the power to end the war. 
There are two effective replies to this curious Anglo- 
Saxon misunderstanding of Germany. The first is that 
Liebknecht had not, and has not, the support of his own 
party ; the second, that were that party twice as numer- 
ous as it is its votes would be worthless in view of the 
power wielded by the Kaiser's representative, von 
Bethmann-Hollweg, backed up by the Federal Council. 

It is difficult to drive this fact into the heads of 
British and American people, who are both prone to 
judge German institutions by their own. 

For, remember always that behind the dominant 
Imperial Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, stands 
the All-Highest War Lord, and behind him, what is still, 
if damaged, the mightiest military machine in the world 
— the German Army. Opposed to that there is at 
present a slowly increasing Socialist vote — the two have 
grown to about twenty. 



CHAPTER XV 

PREVENTIVE AKEEST 

IN- the beginning of the war, when all seemed to be 
going well, there was no disunity in Germany. 
When Germany was winning victory after victory, prac- 
tically no censorship was needed in the newspapers ; the 
police were tolerant; every German smiled upon every 
other German; soldiers went forth singing and their 
trains were gaily decorated with oak leaves ; social de- 
mocracy praised militarism. 

All that has changed and the hosts who went singing 
on their way in the belief that they would be home in 
six weeks, have left behind homes many of them be- 
reaved by the immense casualties, and most of them 
suffering from the increased food shortage. 

Class feeling soon increased. The poor began to 
call the rich agrarians "usurers." The Government 
forbade socialistic papers such as the Yorwaerts to use 
the word "usurer" any more, because it was applied to 
the powerful junkers. Such papers as the Tdgliche 
Rundschau and the Tageszeitung could continue to use 
it, however, for they applied it to the small shopkeeper 
who exceeded the maximum price by a fraction of a 
penny. 

As the rigour of the blockade increased, the discon- 
tent of the small minority who were beginning to hate 
their own Government almost as much as, and in many 

176 



PREVENTIVE ARREST 177 

cases more, than they hated enemies of Germany, as- 
sumed more threatening forms than mere discussion. 
Their disillusionment regarding Germany's invincibil- 
ity opened their eyes to faults at home. Some of the 
extreme Social Democrats were secretly spreading the 
treasonable doctrine that the German Government was 
not entirely blameless in the causes of the war. It has 
been my custom to converse with all classes of society, 
and I was amazed at the increasing number of dis- 
gruntled citizens. 

But the German Government is still determined to 
have unity. They had enlisted the services of editors, 
reporters, professors, parsons and cinema operators to 
create it ; they are now giving the police an increasingly 
important role to maintain it. 

As the German. Parliament in no way resembles the 
British Parliament, so do the German police in no way 
resemble the British police. The German police, 
mounted or unmounted, are armed with a revolver, a 
sword, and not infrequently provided with a machine- 
gun. They have powers of search and arrest without 
warrant. They are allowed at their discretion to strike 
or otherwise maltreat not only civilians, but soldiers. 
Always armed with extraordinary power, their position 
during the past few months has risen to such an extent 
that the words used in the Reichstag, "The Reign of 
Terror," are not an exaggeration. 

Aided and even abetted by a myriad of spies and 
agents-provocateurs, they have placed under what is 
known as "preventive arrest" throughout the German 
Empire and Austria so great a number of civilians that 



178 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

the German prisons, as has been admitted, are filled to 
repletion. 

With the Reichstag shut np, and the hold on the 
newspapers tightening, what opportunity remains by 
which independent thought can be disseminated? 

In Poland meetings to consider what they call 
"Church affairs," but which were really revolutionary 
gatherings, afforded opportunity for discussion. These 
have been ruled out of order. 

The lectures taking place in their thousands all over 
Germany might afford a chance of expression of opin- 
ion, but the professors, like the pastors, are, as I have 
said, so absolutely dependent upon the Government for 
their position and promotion, that I have only heard 
of one of them who had the temerity to make any speech 
other than those of the "God-punish-England" and 
"We-must-hold-out" type. His resignation from the 
University of Munich was immediately demanded, and 
any number of sycophants were ready to take his place. 

Clubs are illegal in Germany, and the humblest 
working-men's cafes are attended by spies. In my re- 
searches in the Berlin East-end I often visited these 
places and shared my adulterated beer and war bread 
with the working folk — all of them over or under mili- 
tary age. 

One evening a shabby old man said rather more 
loudly than was necessary to a number of those round 
him: — "I am tired of reading in the newspapers how 
nice the war is. Even the Vorwaerts (then a Socialist 
paper) lies to us. I am tired of walking home night 
after night and finding restaurants turned into hos- 
pitals for the wounded." 



PREVENTIVE ARREST 179 

He was referring in particular to the great 8chult- 
heiss working-men's restaurants in Hasenheide. His 
remarks were received with obvious sympathy. 

A couple of nights later I went into this same place 
and took my seat, but it was obvious that my visit wag 
unwelcome. I was looked at suspiciously. I did not 
think very much of the incident, but ten days later in 
passing I called again, when a lusty young fellow of 
eighteen, to whom I had spoken on my first visit, came 
forward and said to me, almost threateningly, "You 
are a stranger here. May I ask what you are doing ?" 

I said : "I am an American newspaper correspondent, 
and am trying to find out what I can about the ways of 
German working folk." 

He could tell by my accent that I was a foreigner, 
and said: "We thought that you had told the Govern- 
ment about that little free speaking we had here a few 
days ago. You know that the little old man who was 
complaining about the restaurants being turned into his- 
pitals has been arrested?" 

This form of arrest, by which hundreds of people are 
mysteriously disappearing, is one of the burning griev- 
ances of Germany to-day. In its application it re- 
sembles what we used to read about Russian police. It 
has created a condition beneath the surface in Germany 
resembling the terrorism of the Erench Revolution. In 
the absence of a Habeas Corpus Act, the victim lies in 
gaol indefinitely, while the police are, nominally, col- 
lecting the evidence against him. One cannot move 
about very long without coming across instances of this 
growing form of tyranny, but I will merely give one 
other. 



1 80 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

A German family, resident in Sweden, were in corre- 
spondence with a woman resident in Prussia. In one 
of her letters she incautiously remarked, "What a pity 
that the two Emperors cannot be taught what war really 
means to the German peoples." She had lost two sons, 
and her expression of bitterness was just a feminine 
outburst, which in any other country, would have been 
passed by. She was placed under preventive arrest, 
and is still in gaol. 

The police are armed with the censorship of the in- 
ternal postal correspondence, telegrams and telephones. 
One of the complaints of the Social Democrat members 
of the Eeichstag is that every movement is spied upon, 
and their communications tampered with by what they 
call the "Black Chamber." 

There is no reason to suppose that the debates in 
the closing session of the Reichstag in 1916 on police 
tyranny, the Press censorship, the suppression of public 
opinion, will lead to any result other than the familiar 
expressions of mild indignation — such as that which 
came from the ]!!«[ational Liberal and Pan-German 
leader, Dr. Paasche — and perhaps a little innocent leg- 
islation. But the reports of the detailed charges against 
the Government constitute, even as passed by the Ger- 
man censorship for publication, a remarkable revela- 
tion. It should be remembered in reading the follow- 
ing quotations that the whole subject has been discussed 
in the secrecy of the Peichstag Committee, and that 
what is now disclosed is in the main only what the Gov- 
ernment has been unable to hush up or hide. 

In his famous speech on "preventive arrest" the So- 
cial Democratic Deputy, Herr Dittmann said: — 



PREVENTIVE ARREST i8i 

"Last May I remarked that the system of preventive 
arrest was producing a real reign of terror, and since 
then things have got steadily worse. The law as it was 
before 1848 and the Socialist Law, of scandalous 
memory, are celebrating their resurrection. The sys- 
tem of denunciation and of agents-provocateurs is in 
full bloom, and it is all being done under the mask of 
patriotism and the saving of the country. Anybody 
who for personal or other reasons is regarded by the 
professional agents-provocateurs as unsatisfactory or 
inconvenient is put under suspicion of espionage, or 
treason, or other crime. And such vague denunciations 
are then sufficient to deprive the victim of his freedom, 
without any possibility of defence being given him. In 
many cases such arrest has been maintained by the year 
without any lawful foundation for it. Treachery and 
low cunning are now enjoying real orgies. A criminal 
is duly convicted and knows his fate. The man under 
preventive arrest is overburdened by the uncertainty of 
despair, and is simply buried alive. The members of 
the Government do not seem to have a spark of under- 
standing for this situation, the mental and material ef- 
fects of which are equally terrible. 

"Dr. Helfferich said in the Budget Committee in the 
case of Dr» Franz Mehring that it is better that he 
should be under detention than that he should be at 
large and do something for which he would have to be 
punished. According to this reasoning the best thing 
would be to lock up everybody and keep them from 
breaking the law. The ideal of Dr. Helfferich seems 
to be the German l^ational Prison of which Heine 
spoke. The case of Mehring is classical proof of the 



1 82 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

fact that we are no longer far removed from the Helf- 
ferich ideal." 

Herr Dittmann went on to say that Herr Mehring's 
only offence was that in a letter seized by the police 
he wrote to a Keichstag deputy named Herzfeld in 
favour of a peace demonstration in Berlin, and offered 
to write a fly-sheet inviting attendance at such a meet- 
ing. Mehring, who is over 70 years of age, was then 
locked up. Herr Dittmann continued: — 

"How much longer will it be before even thoughts 
become criminal in Germany ? Mehring is one of the 
most brilliant historians and writers, and one of the 
first representatives of German intellectual life — ^known 
as such far beyond the German frontiers. When it is 
now known abroad that such a man has been put under 
a sort of preventive arrest merely in order to cut him 
off from the public for political reasons, one really can- 
not be astonished at the low reputation enjoyed by the 
German Government both at home and abroad. How 
evil must be the state of a Government which has to 
lock up the first minds of the country in order to choke 
their opposition!" 

Herr Dittmann's second case was that of Frau Eosa 
Luxemburg. He said that she was put under arrest 
many months ago, without any charge being made 
against her, and merely out of fear of her intellectual 
influence upon the working classes. All the Socialist 
women of Germany were deeply indignant, and he in- 
vited the Government to consider that such things must 
make it the positive duty of Socialists in France, Eng- 
land, Italy and Russia "to fight against a Government 
which imprisons without any reason the best-known 



PREVENTIVE ARREST 183 

champions of the International proletariat." The treat- 
ment of both Mehring and Frau Luxemburg had been 
terrible. The former, old and ill, had had the greatest 
difficulty in getting admission to a prison infirmary. 
Frau Luxemburg a month ago was taken from her 
prison bed in the middle of the night, removed to the 
police headquarters, and put in a cell which was re- 
served for prostitutes. She had not been allowed a 
doctor, and had been given food which she could not 
eat. Just before the Reichstag debate she had been 
taken away from Berlin to Wronke, in the Province 
of Posen. 

Herr Dittmann then gave a terrible account, some 
of it unfit for reproduction, of the treatment in prison 
of two girls of eighteen whose offence was that on June 
27th they had distributed invitations to working women 
to attend a meeting of protest against the procedure in 
the case of Herr Liebknecht. He observed that they 
owed it entirely to themselves and to their training if 
they had not been ruined physically and morally in 
their "royal Prussian prison." When they were 
at last released they were informed that they would 
be imprisoned for the rest of the war if they 
attended any public meeting. Herr Dittmann pro- 
ceeded : — 

"Here we have police brutality in all its purity. 
This is how a working-class child who is trying to make 
her way up to knowledge and Kultur is treated in the 
country of the promised 'new orientation,' in which 
(according to the Imperial Chancellor) '^the road is to 
be opened for all who are efficient.' These are the 
methods by which the spirit of independence is syste- 



1 84 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

matically to be killed. That is the reason for the arrests 
of members of the Socialist party who stand on the side 
of determined opposition. You imagine that by isolat- 
ing the leading elements of the opposition you can crush 
the head of the snake." 

Herr Dittmann's next case was that of Dr. Meyer, 
one of the editors of VorwaertSj who was arrested many 
months ago. He is suffering from tuberculosis, but is 
not allowed to go to a sanatorium. Another Socialist 
journalist named ^egge^ father of six children, has 
been under arrest since August, his only offence being 
that he has agitated against the militarist majority. 
Herr Dittmann then dealt at lenght with the Socialist 
journalist named Kliihs, who has been in prison for 
eight months, also for his activity on behalf of the So- 
cialist minority against the majority, and was pre- 
vented from communicating with his dying wife or at- 
tending her funeral. 

Herr Dittmann gave the details of three cases at 
Diisseldorf and one at Brunswick, and then explained 
how the military authorities in many parts of Germany 
are deliberately offering Socialists the choice between 
silence and military service. A well-known trade union 
official at Elberfeld, named Sauerbrey, who had been 
declared totally unfit for military service because he 
had lost several fingers on his left hand, was arrested 
and charged with treason. He was acquitted, but in- 
stead of obtaining his freedom he was immediately 
called up and is now in training for the front. Herr 
Dittmann said that this case had caused intense bitter- 
ness, and added: — 

"The Military Command at Mlinster is surprised 



PREVENTIVE ARREST 185 

that the feeling in the whole Wupper Valley is becom- 
ing more and more discontented, and the military are 
now hatching new measures of violence in order to be 
able to master this discontent. One would think that 
such things came from the madhouse. In reality they 
represent conditions under martial law, and this case 
is only one of very many." 

Herr Dittmann gave several instances of men de- 
clared unfit for service who had been called up for po- 
litical reasons, and he ended his speech as follows: — 

"In regard to all this persecution of peaceful citi- 
zens there is a regular apparatus of agents-provoca- 
teurs, provided by officials of all kinds, and the appara- 
tus is growing every day. If these persecutions were 
stopped a great number of these agents and oflScials 
could be released for military service. In most cases 
they are mere shirkers, and that is why they cling to 
their posts and seeJc every day to prove themselves in- 
dispensable by discovering all sorts of crimes. Because 
they do not want to go to the trenches other people must 
go to prison. Put an end to the state of martial law, 
and help us to root up a state of things which disgraces 
the German name." 

The Alsatian deputy, Herr Haus, said that Alsace- 
Lorraine is suffering more than any other part of the 
country, and that more than 1,000 persons have been 
arrested without any charge being brought against them. 
Herr Seyda, for the Poles, said that the Polish popula- 
tion of Germany suffers especially from the system of 
preventive arrest. 

In his contemptuous reply, which showed that the 
Government was confident that it had nothing to fear 



1 86 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

from the majority in the Reichstag, Herr Helfferich 
said : — 

"The institution of the dictator comes from ancient 
Rome, from the classical Republic of antiquity. 
(Laughter.) When the State was fighting for its ex- 
istence it was found necessary to place supreme power 
in the hands of a single man, and to give this Roman 
dictator authority which was much greater than the au- 
thority belonging to preventive arrest and martial law. 
The whole development proceeds by way of compro- 
mise between the needs of the State and the needs of 
protection for the individual. The results vary accord- 
ing to the particular level of civilisation reached by the 
particular State. (Socialist cries of 'Very true.') We 
are not at the lowest level. When one considers the 
state of things in Germany in peace time we can be 
proud. (Socialist interruptions.) I am proud of Ger- 
many. I think that our constitutional system before 
the outbreak of war and our level of Kultur were such 
as every German could be proud of. ('l!^o, no.') I 
hope that we shall soon be able to revert to those con* 
ditions." 

Herr Helfferich went on to argue that repression in 
Germany is really much milder than in France, Eng- 
land, or Italy; and for the debate on the censorship, 
which followed the debate on preventive arrest, he came 
armed with an account of the Defence of the Realm 
Acts. When he enlarged upon the powers of the Brit- 
ish Government he was interrupted by cries of "It is 
a question not of theory but of practice," and the So- 
cialist leader Herr Stadthagen made a scathing reply. 
He said : — 



PREVENTIVE ARREST 187 

"Even if ever^i:hing in England is as Herr Helf- 
ferich described it, the state of things is much better 
there than in Germany. Herr Helfferich stated the 
cases in which arrest and searcE of dwellings may take 
place, but those are cases in which similar action can- 
be taken in Germany in time of peace under the or- 
dinary criminal law. The Englishman has quite other 
rights. He has the right to his personality, and, above 
all, the officials in England, unlike Germany, are per- 
sonally responsible. When we make a law, that law 
is repealed by the Administration. That is the whole 
point, but Herr Helfferich does not see it, and he does 
not see that we live in a Police State and under a po- 
lice system. Did it ever occur to anybody in England 
to dispute the right of immunity of members of parlia- 
ment? Did it ever occur to anybody in England 
to go to members of the Opposition in Parliament and 
demand that they should resign their seats on pain of 
arrest? Or has anybody in England been threatened 
with arrest if he does not withdraw a declaration 
against the committee of his party? Two newspapers 
have been suppressed in England because they opposed 
munitions work. I regret this check upon free criticism 
in England, but what would have happened in Ger- 
many? In Germany there would undoubtedly have 
been a prosecution for high treason. In England, 
moreover, the newspapers are allowed to reappear, and 
that without giving any guarantees. In Germany we 
are required to give guarantees that the papers shall be 
conducted by a person approved of by the political po- 
lice. Herr Helfferich employs inappropriate compari- 
sons. I will give him one which applies. The political 



1 8 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

police in Germany is precisely what the State Inquisi- 
tion was in Venice." 

An interesting point in the censorship debate was 
the disclosure of the fact that the local censors do what 
they please. Herr Seyda protested against the peculiar 
persecution of the Poles. He remarked that at Gnesen 
no Polish paper has been allowed to appear for the past 
two years. 

But as significant as anything was Herr Stadthagen's 
account of the recruiting for the political police. He 
said that the police freely offer both money and exemp- 
tion from military service to boys who are about to be- 
come liable for service. He gave a typical case of a 
boy of seventeen. The police called at his home and 
inquired whether he belonged to any Socialist organisa- 
tion and whether he had been medically examined for 
the Army. A police official then waylaid the boy as 
he was leaving work and promised him that, if he would 
give information of what went on in his Socialist as- 
sociation, he could earn from £4 to £4 10s. a month 
and be exempt from military service. 

There is a peculiar connection between censorship 
and police. The evil effect of the censorship of their 
own Press by the German Government is to hypnotise 
the thousands of Government bureaucrats into the be- 
lief that that which they read in their own controlled 
Press is true. 

]^o people are more ready to believe what they want 
to believe than the governing class in Germany. They 
wanted to believe that Great Britain would not come 
into the war. They had got into their heads, too, that 
Japan was going to be an ally of theirs. They wrote 



PREVENTIVE ARREST 189 

themselves into the belief that France was defeated and 
would collapse. 

Regarding the Press, as they do, as all-important, 
thej picked from the British Press any articles or 
fragments of articles suitable for their purpose and 
quoted them. They are adepts in the art of dissecting 
a paragraph so that the sense is quite contrary to that 
meant by the writer. 

But the German Government goes further than that. 
It is quite content to quote to-day expressions of Greek 
opinion from Athens organs well known to be subsidised 
by Germany. Certain bribed papers in Zurich and 
Stockholm,, and one notorious American paper, are used 
for this process of self-hypnotism. The object is two- 
fold. First, to influence public opinion in the foreign 
country, and, secondly, by requoting the opinion, to in- 
fluence their own people into believing that this is the 
opinion held in the country from which it emanates. 
Thus, when I told Germans that large numbers of the 
Dutch people are pro-Ally, they point to an extract 
from an article in De Toekomst and controvert me. 

These methods go to strengthen the hands of the po- 
lice when they declare that in acting severely they are 
only acting against anarchistic opinions likely to create 
the impression abroad that there is disunity within the 
Empire. 

Never, so far as I can gather, in the world's history 
was there so complete a machine for the suppression of 
individual opinion as the German police. 

The anti-war demonstrations in Germany range all 
the way from the smashing of a few food-shop windows 



190 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

to the complete preparations for a serious crippling of 
the armies in the field bj a general munition strike. 

Half-waj between were the so-called "Liebknecht 
riots" in Berlin. The notices summoning these semi- 
revolutionarj meetings were whispered through fac- 
tories, and from mouth to mouth by women standing 
in the food lines waiting for their potatoes, morning 
bread, meat, sugar, cheese, and other supplies. Lieb- 
knecht was brought to secret trial on June STth, on the 
evening of which demonstrations took place throughout 
the city. I was present at the one near the Rathaus, 
which was dispersed towards midnight when the police 
actually drew their revolvers and charged the crowd. 

The following evening I was at an early hour in the 
Potsdamer Platz, where a great demonstration was to 
take place. It was the second anniversary of the mur- 
der at Sarajevo. The city was clearly restless, agi- 
tated; people were on the watch for something to hap- 
pen. The Potsdamer Platz is the centre through which 
the great arteries of traffic flow westward after the work 
of the day is done. The people who stream through it 
do not belong to the poorer classes, for these live in 
the east and the north. But on this mild June evening 
there was a noticeably large number of working men in 
the streets leading into the Platz. I was standing near 
a group of these when the evening editions appeared 
with the news that Liebknecht had been sentenced. A 
low murmur among the workmen, mutterings of sup- 
pressed rage when they realised the significance of the 
short trial of two days, and a determined movement 
toward the place of demonstration. 

I hurried to the Potsdamer Platz. The number of 



PREVENTIVE ARREST 1 9 1 

police stationed in the streets leading into it increased. 
The Platz itself was blue with them, for they stood 
together in groups of six, ten and twelve. I went along 
the Budapester Strasse to the Brandenburger Tor, 
through which workmen from Moabit had streamed at 
noon declaring that they would strike. They had been 
charged by the mounted police, who drove them back 
across the Spree. There was a blue patrol along the 
Unter den Linden now. A whole army corps of police 
were on the alert in the German capital. 

I returned to the Potsdamer Platz. It was thick 
with people now — curious onlookers. There were 
crowds of workmen in the adjacent streets, but they 
were not allowed to approach too near. Again and 
again they tried, but, unarmed, they were powerless 
when the horses were driven into them. I saw a few 
of the most obstinate struck with the flat of sabres, and 
on others were rained blows from the police on foot. 
!N'obody hit back, or even defended himself. 

There was practically no violence such as one expects 
from a mob. It was something else which impressed 
me. It impressed my police-lieutenant friend, also. 
That was the dangerous ugliness in the workmen. Hate 
was written in their faces, and the low growl in the 
crowd told all too plainly the growing feeling against 
the war. 

The Government realised this. They had already 
seen that the unity they had so artificially created could 
only be held by force. They had used force in the muz- 
zling of Liebknecht, and quietly they were employing 
a most potent force every day, the force of preventive 
arrest. 



192 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

In July there was agitation for the great munition 
strike which was to have taken place on the day of the 
second anniversary of the war. The dimensions of the 
proposed rising were effectually concealed by the cen- 
sorship. The ugly feeling in the Potsdamer Platz had 
taught the Government a lesson. 

'No detail was neglected in the preparations against 
the strike. There was a significant movement of ma- 
chine-guns to all points of danger, such as the Moabit 
district of Berlin, and Spandau, together with count- 
less warnings against so-called "anarchists." Any 
workman who showed the slightest tendency to be a 
leader in a factory group was taken away. The ex- 
pressions of intention not to work the first four days 
of August became so strong that the Press issued a 
warning that any man refusing to work would be put 
into a uniform, and he would receive not eight or more 
marks a day as in munition work, but three marks in 
ten days. Even the Kaiser supplemented his regular 
anniversary manifestoes to the armed forces of the Em- 
pire and the civilian population with a special appeal 
to the workmen. 

I was up and ready at an early hour on the morning 
of August 1st. Again the city was blue with police. 
But this time they were reinforced. As I walked 
through streets lined with soldiers in the workingmen's 
quarters, I realised the futility of any further anti-war 
demonstrations in the Fatherland. 

I stood in the immense square before the Royal Pal- 
ace, and reflected that two years ago it was packed with 
a crowd wild with joy at the opportunity of going to 
war. There was unity. I stood on the very spot where 



PREVENTIVE ARREST i93 

the old man was jeered because he had said, "War is a 
serious business, young fellow." 

On August 1st, 1916, there were more police in the 
square than civilians. On Unter den Linden paced the 
blue patrol. There was still unity in Germany, but a 
unity maintained by revolver, sword and machine- 
gun. 



CHAPTEK XVI 

POLICE EULE IN BOHEMIA 

IN his speech to the Senate President Wilson said: 
"No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not 
recognise and accept the principle that Governments 
derive all their just powers from the consent of the 
governed. . . . l^o nation should seek to extend 
its polity over any other nation or people, but every 
people should be left free to determine its own policy, 
its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, 
unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful." 

The realisation of these admirable sentiments pre- 
sents infinite problems in various sections of Europe, 
but nowhere, perhaps, more than in Austria-Hungary. 
In his heterogeneous collection of peoples, the old Em- 
peror had to make a choice between two courses in order 
to hold his thirteen distinct races together in one Em- 
pire. He could have tried to make them politically 
contented through freedom to manage their own affairs 
while owing allegiance to the Empire as a whole, or he 
could suppress the individual people to such an extent 
that he would have unity by force. 

He chose the second course. With the Germans dom- 
inant in Austria and the Magyars in Hungary, other 
nations have been scientifically subjugated. As in the 
case of the procedure of "Preventive Arrest" in Ger- 
many, the .authorities seek to work smoothly and si- 

194 



POLICE RULE IN BOHEMIA 195 

lently, with the result that only an occasional echo 
reaches the outside world. 

The description of the relations of the various peoples 
and the "Unity-Machine" employed would fill a large 
book. Control of public opinion has been the first ac- 
tion of the rulers of the Dual Monarchy. In peace 
time, not only were the suppressed nations, such as the 
Czechs, Slovaks, Rumanians, Luthenians, Poles, Slo- 
venes, Italians, but all the citizens of Austria-Himgary, 
denied the right of free speech and freedom of the 
Press. Some of the regulations by which the Govern- 
ment held absolute sway over its subjects are: 

(1) ITo newspaper or other printing business could 
be established until a heavy deposit was made with 
the police for the payment of fines, such fines to be 
arbitrarily imposed by the police — in whom is vested 
extraordinary power — when anything . political was 
written which did not please them. They are difficult 
to please, I may add. 

(2) A complete copy of each edition must be sent to 
the police before it was put on sale. "Good" editors 
whose inspiration was of a nature to enable them to 
interpret the wishes of the Government, sometimes re- 
ceived a dispensation from this formality. 

(3) l^o club might hold a private meeting. A repre- 
sentative of the police must be present. This rule was 
often extended even to friendly gatherings in private 
homes in such places as Bohemia. 

(4) ^o political meeting might be held without a 
permit, and a representative of the police must be 
present. Often he sat on the platform. It is amusing 
for the visitor from a free country to attend a political 



196 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

meeting where the chairman, speaker and policeman 
file tip on the stage to occupy the three chairs reserved 
for them. The policeman may be heard by those in 
the front rows continually cautioning the speaker. If 
he thinks the speaker is talking too freely he either in- 
tervenes through the chairman and lasks him to be 
moderate or dismisses the meeting. 

These regulations, I again remind the reader, were in 
force in peace time. It is easy to see how an extension 
of them effectually checks attempts of the Czechs (Bo- 
hemians) and other peoples to legislate themselves into 
a little freedom. 

When I came to England early in the war from 
Austria-Hungary and Germany I heard many expres- 
sions of hope that the discontented races in the Empire 
of Erancis Joseph would rebel, and later expressions of 
surprise that they did not. Englishmen held the opinion 
that such races would be decidedly averse from fighting 
for the Hapsburgs. The opinion was correct, and no- 
body knew this better than the Hapsburgs themselves. 

Like the German Government in the matter of 
Alsace-Lorraine, the Austrian Government has en- 
deavoured to mislead public opinion in foreign coun- 
tries as to the state of mind of the Czechs by false 
information and to conceal the true military and politi- 
cal situation from the population at home. Austria's 
first problem at the outbreak of war — a problem which 
has been worked out to the last detail — was rapidly 
to move the soldiers of the subjugated races from their 
native lands. Since the Bosnians, for example, are of 
the Serbian race, they were mobilised secretly in the 
middle of July and sent out of Bosnia. I saw 30,000 



POLICE RULE IN BOHEMIA 197 

moved through. Trieste several days before war was 
declared on Serbia. A German acquaintance, with 
great shipping interests, enthusiastically indiscreet at 
sight of them, exclaimed to the little group of which 
I was one : "A wonderful system — a wonderful system ! 
The Bosnians could not be trusted to fight the Serbs. 
But we Germans can use them' if they prove trouble- 
some to Austria," he continued excitedly. "We can 
send them against the French. We will tell them that 
if they do not shoot the French, we will shoot them/' 
I thought this a rather curious conversation for July 
25th, 1914. 

Less than fortnight later I saw two Bohemian regi- 
ments arrive at Prasso, Transylvania, the province 
farthest removed from their homes, to be garrisoned in 
a region, the population of which is Rumanian, Hun- 
garian and Saxon. I was told later that the Rumanians 
who had left the garrisons at Brasso had gone to Bo- 
hemia. As I observed these initial steps in the great 
smooth-running Austiro-Hungarian military machine, 
I was impressed with the impossibility of revolution. 
With the soldier element scientifically broken up and 
scattered all over the country, who could revolt — the 
women and children? 

The Slav soldiers of Austria-Hungary desert to Rus- 
sia at every opportunity. The fact that she now has 
upwards of 1,200,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners is 
sufficient refutation of the sugar-coated propaganda 
describing how all the peoples who make up Austria- 
Hungary rushed loyally and enthusiastically to arms to 
the defence of their Emperor and common country. 
This is perfectly true of the politically dominant races, 



1 9 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

the Germans and the Magyars, but the "enthusiasm" 
I witnessed among the subjugated races consisted 
chiefly of sad-faced soldiers and weeping women. 

The Bohemians have given most trouble. One Ger- 
man officer who was sent to Austria to help bolster up 
her army told me that he didn't worry over the deser- 
tion of Bohemians singly and in small groups. He ex- 
pected that. But he did take serious exception to the 
increasingly popular custom of whole battalions with 
their officers and equipment passing over to the Russian 
lines intact. 

The story of the Bohemian regiment trapped in the 
Army of Leopold of Bavaria is generally known in 
Austria. When the staff learned that this regiment 
planned to cross to the Russians on a certain night, 
three Bavarian regiments, well equipped with machine- 
guns, were set to trap it. Contrary to usual procedure, 
the Bohemians were induced by the men impersonating 
the Russians to lay down their arms as an evidence of 
good faith before crossing. The whole regiment was 
then rounded up and marched to the rear, where a pub- 
lic example was made of it. The officers were shot. 
Then every tenth man was shot. The Government, in 
order to circumvent any unfavourable impression which 
this act might make in Bohemia, caused to be read each 
day for three days in the schools a decree of the Em- 
peror, condemning the treachery of this regiment, the 
number of which was ordered for ever to be struck from 
the military rolls of the Empire. 

During the terrific fighting at Baranowitchi in the 
great Russian offensive last summer, at a time when 
the Russians repeatedly but unsuccessfully stormed that 



POLICE RULE IN BOHEMIA i99 

important railway junction, some Prussian units found 
their right flank unsupported one morning at dawn, 
because two Bohemian battalion^ had changed flags 
during the night. The next Russian attack caused the 
Prussians to lose 48 per cent, of their men. 

This was the final straw for the Staff of Leopold's 
Army. An Order was issued explaining to the troops 
that henceforth no more Czechs would have the honour 
of doing first line duty, since their courage was not of 
as high a degree as that of the others. I found that 
the Prussians, despite their depleted state, actually be- 
lieved this explanation, which filled them with pride in 
themselves and contempt for the Czechs. 

But the German officers in charge of reorganising the 
Austro-Hungarian Army were not content to let Bo- 
hemians perform safe duties in the rear. Consequently, 
they diluted them until no regiment contained more 
than 20 per cent. 

The authorities have been no less thorough with the 
civilian population. From the day of mobilisation all 
political life was suspended. The three parties of the 
Opposition, the Radicals, the ^National-Socialists, and 
the Progressives, were annihilated and their newspapers 
suppressed. Their leaders, such men as Kramarzh, 
Rasin, Klofatch, Scheiner, Mazaryk, Durich, the men 
who served as guides to the nation, were imprisoned or 
exiled. This is surely a violation of the principle that 
Governments derive their just powers from the consent 
of the governed, for all these men were the true repre- 
sentatives of the people. The fact that the Government 
was obliged to get rid of the leaders of the nation shows 
what the real situation in Bohemia is. 



200 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

The Czech deputies who were considered dangerous, 
numbering forty, were mobilised. They were not all 
sent to the front ; some were allowed temporary exemp- 
tion; but the Government gave them to understand 
that the slightest act of hostility towards the Monarchy 
on their part would result in their being called up imme- 
diately and sent to the front. 

The fetters of the Press were drawn more tightly. 
Even the German papers were not allowed into Bohe- 
mia. Por some months, two or three enterprising 
editors used to send a representative to Dresden to read 
the German and English papers there. At present 
three-quarters of the Czech papers and all the Slovak 
newspapers have been suppressed. The columns of 
those which are still allowed to appear in Bohemia and 
Moravia are congested by mandates of the police and 
the military authorities, which the editors are compelled 
to insert. E/ecently the Government censorship has 
been particularly active against books, collections of 
national songs, and post-cards. It has even gone so 
far as to confiscate scientific works dealing with Slav 
questions, Dostoyevski's novels, the books of Tolstoi 
and Millioukoff, and collections of purely scientific Slav 
study and histories. 

The Government, however, have had to proceed to 
far greater lengths. By May, 1916, the death sentences 
of civilians pronounced in Austria since the beginning 
of the war exceeded 4,000. Of these, 965 were Czechs. 
A large proportion of the condemned were women. 
The total of soldiers executed amounts to several 
thousands. 

Is it not peculiar that among people which the 



POLICE RULE IN BOHEMIA 201 

Viennese propaganda represents as loyal, hostages are 
taken in Bohemia, and condemned to death, under the 
threat of execution if a popular movement takes place ? 
The people are told of this and are given to understand 
that the hostages have hopes for mercy if all is quiet. 

ITot only have the authorities confiscated the prop- 
erty of all persons convicted of political offences and 
of all Czechs who have fled from Austria-Hungary, hut 
a system has heen established by which the property of 
Czech soldiers who are prisoners in Russia is confis- 
cated. The State profits doubly by this measure, for 
it futher suppresses the allowances made to the fam- 
ilies of these soldiers. In order to terrorise its adver- 
saries through such measures, the Government instructs 
the Austrian newspapers to publish long lists of con- 
fiscations and other penalties. 

After a time, however, the Austrian Government 
practically abdicated in favour of the Prussians and 
now undertake to carry out the measures of Germanisa- 
tion dictated by Berlin. The rights in connection with 
the use of the Czech language in administration, in 
the Law Courts and on the railways, rights which were 
won by the desperate efforts of two generations of Czech 
politicians, have been abrogated. The management of 
the railways has been placed in the hands of Prussian 
military ofiicials; the use of the Czech language has 
been suppressed in the administration, where it had 
formerly been lawful. The Czechs have been denied 
access to the Magistrature and to public offices where 
they had occasionally succeeded in directing the affairs 
in their own country. 



CHAPTER XVII 

SPIES AND SEMI-SPIES 

A COMPREHENSIVE accoiint of the German system of 
espionage would need something resembling the 
dimensions of a general encyclopaedia, but for the 
present I must endeavour to summarise the subject in 
the course of a chapter. 

Spying is just as essential an ingredient of Prussian 
character as conceit, indifference to the feelings of 
others, jealousy, envy, self-satisfaction, conceit, indus- 
try, inquisitiveness, veneration for officialdom, imita- 
tiveness, materialism, and the other national attributes 
that will occur to those who know Prussia, as distinct 
from the other German States. 

Prussian men and women hardly know the meaning 
of the word "private," and, as they have Prussianised 
to a great or less degree all the other States of the 
Empire, they have inured the German to publicity from 
childhood upwards. 

In the enforcement of food regulations the hands of 
the Government in Germany are strengthened by cer- 
tain elements in the German character, one of which 
is the tendency of people to spy upon each other. Here 
is a case. Last Easter the customary baking of cakes — 
a time-honoured ceremony in Germany — was forbidden 
all over Prussia from April 1 to 26. A certain good 
woman of Stettin, whose husband was coming home 

ao2 



SPIES AND SEMI-SPIES 203 

from the trenches, thought that she would welcome her 
soldier with one of the cakes of which German men and 
women are so fond. She foolishly displayed her treasure 
to a neighbour, who had dropped in for gossip. The 
neighbour cut short the interview, went home to her 
telephone, called up the police and, as she put it, did 
her duty. I suppose from the German point of view it 
is the duty of people to spy in each other's houses. 
From an Anglo-Saxon point of view it is something 
rather like sneaking at school. 

With these elements in their character, it is natural 
that the Germans should be past masters in the art of 
espionage. It does not follow that they are equally 
successful in the deductions formed from their investi- 
gations in foreign matters, but they are so egoistical and 
so literal, so fond of making reports, so fond of seeing 
things only from their own point of view, that, while 
they may be successful in obtaining possession by spy- 
ing, purchase, or theft, of the plans, say, of a new bat- 
tleship, they are not able to form an accurate estimate 
of the character and intentions of the people among 
whom they may be spying. 

Their military spying is believed to be as perfect as 
such work can be, marred occasionally by the contempt 
they feel for other nations in military matters. I pre- 
sume that there is not much difference in the systems 
of various nations except that the German military spy- 
ing is probably more thorough. 

It is also true that Germans of social distinction will 
often take positions far beneath their rank in order to 
gather valuable information for their Government. 
The case of the hall porter in the Hotel des IndeSj the 



204 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

most fashionable hotel in The Hague, is a notorious 
example. He is of gentle birth, a brother of Baron von 
Wangenheim, late German Ambassador to Constanti- 
nople. 

In one of the most luxurious dining-saloons on one of 
the most luxurious of the great German liners — I 
promised my trustworthy informant not to be more 
definite — the man who was head-waiter during the year 
preceding the war impressed those under him with 
being much more interested in some mysterious busi- 
ness ashore than in his duties aboard ship. He threw 
most of his work on subordinates, who complained, 
though unsuccessfully, to the management. Unlike 
other bead-waiters and chief stewards, he was never 
aboard the ship when it was in port. He was the only 
German in the dining-saloon, and he seemed to have 
great influence. He conversed freely with influential 
passengers of various nationalities. 

The liner was in the English Channel eastward 
bound when news came that Germany had declared 
war upon Russia. What little interest he had pre- 
viously displayed in his duties now vanished completely, 
and he paced the deck more and more impatiently as 
the vessel neared Cuxhaven. He was one of the first to 
go ashore, but before leaving he turned to two of the 
stewards and exclaimed, "Good-bye. I am going to 
Wilhelmshaven to take command of my cruiser." 

In general, the work of military attaches of all coun- 
tries is added to by more or less formal reports by 
officers who may be travelling on leave. But German 
military spying goes much farther than this, for inas- 
much as most Germans have been soldiers, the majority 



SPIES AND SEMI-SPIES 205 

of Germans travelling or resident in a foreign country 
are trained observers of military matters and often act 
as semi-spies. 

The system of "sowing" Germans in foreign coun- 
tries, as I have heard it called in Germany, and getting 
them naturalised, was begun by Prussia before the war 
of 1866 against Austria. It was so successful under 
the indirect auspices of the Triumvirate — Moltke, 
Roon, and Bismarck — that it was developed in other 
countries. Thus it is that, while there are compara- 
tively few Frenchmen, for example, naturalised in Eng- 
land, many German residents go through this more or 
less meaningless form just as suits their partic- 
ular business or the German Government, double 
nationality being regarded as a patriotic duty to the 
Eatherland. 

There are, as a rule, three schools of German espion- 
age in other countries — ^the Embassy, the Consulates, 
and the individual spies, who have no connection with 
either and who forward their reports direct to Ger- 
many. 

There is a fourth class of fairly well-paid profes- 
sional spies, men and women, of all classes, who visit 
foreign countries with letters of introduction, who 
attend working-men's conventions, scientific, military, 
and other industrial congresses, receiving from £40 to 
£100 monthly by way of pay. The case of Lody, whom 
the British caught and executed, was a type of the 
patriotic officer spy. But his execution caused no real 
regret in Germany, for he was regarded as a clumsy 
fellow, who roused the vigilance of the British author- 
ities, with the result, I was informed in Germany, of 



2o6 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

the arrest and execution of several others, mostly, it is 
said, Dutch, South American and other neutrals. 

The atmosphere of spying in business is a subtle and 
comparatively modern form of German espionage, and 
has developed with the remarkable rise of German in- 
dustry in the last quarter of a century. It fits in 
admirably with the Consular spy system, and links up 
Germans, naturalised and otherwise, in a chain which 
binds them together in a solidarity of workers for the 
cause. The Deutsche Bank and the Hamburg-Amerika 
Line were very potent engines of espionage. 

ISTor does the "Viktoria Insurance Company of 
Berlin" limit its activities to the kind of business sug- 
gested by the sign over the door. A "Special Bureau" 
in the Avenue de I'Opera, Paris, consisted of German 
Reserve officers who spent a half-year or more in 
Prance. As soon as one of these "finished his educa- 
tion" he was replaced by another Eeserve ofiicer. Their 
duties took them on long motor-trips through eastern 
Prance, strangely enough to localities which might be 
of strategic importance in the event of war. It is not 
without significance that all the clerks of the "Special 
Bureau" left for Germany the day of mobilisation. 

Many of the semi-spies of the German commercial, 
musical, and theatrical world are, from their point of 
view, honest workers and enthusiastic for German 
Kultur. They recently fastened upon England, because 
the Germans for many years have been taught to regard 
this country as their next opponent. 

They are now as industrious in the United States as 
they were in England before the war, because those 
Germans who think they have won the war believe that 



SPIES AND SEMI-SPIES 207 

the United States is their next enemy. How active 
they have been in my country may be gathered from 
the revelations concerning Bernstorff, von Papen, Boy- 
ed, Dumba, the officials of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, 
and many others, whose machinations have been re- 
vealed by the New York World and other journals. 

It is the duty of the German Minister and his staff 
in any foreign conutry, and particularly in countries 
likely to become hostile, to get as close as possible to 
members of Governments, members of Legislatures, 
leaders of thought and society, and members of the 
Press, especially the first and the last in this category. 
Count Bernstorff in the United States did exactly what 
Prince Lichnowsky did in Britain before the war, and, 
if I may say so, did it a great deal more successfully, 
though it is the plea of the Prince's defenders that he 
succeeded in making very powerful and permanent con- 
nections in Great Britain. 

Our American Ambassadors, on the other hand, con- 
fine their attention to strictly ambassadorial work, 
attend to the needs of travelling Americans, and com- 
municate with their Government on matters vital to 
American interests. 

The excellent German Consular system, which has 
done so much to help German trade invaders in foreign 
countries, is openly a spy bureau, and is provided in 
almost every important centre with its own secret 
service fund. Attached to it are spies and semi-spies, 
hotel-keepers, hairdressers, tutors, governesses, and em- 
ployees in Government establishments, such as ship- 
building yards and armament factories. It is a mistake 
to suppose that all these are Germans. Some, I regret 



208 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

to say, are natives of the land in which the Germans are 
spying, mostly people who have got into trouble and 
with whom the German agents have got into touch. 
Such men, especially those who have suffered imprison- 
ment, have often a grudge against their own country 
and are easily caught in the spy net. 

Part of the system in England before the war was a 
commercial information bureau resembling the Ameri- 
can Bradstreets and the English Stubbs, by which, on 
payment of a small sum, the commercial standing of 
any firm or individual can be obtained. This bureau, 
which had its branches also in France and Belgium, 
closed its activities immediately prior to the war, the 
whole of the card-indexes being removed to Berlin. 

It is the German boast, and I believe a legitimate 
one, that they know England better than do the English. 
Their error is in believing that in knowing England 
they hnow the English themselves. 

At the outset of the war, when the Germans were 
winning, Herr Albert Ulrich, of the Deutsche Bank, 
and chief of their Oil Development Department, speak- 
ing in perfect English, told me in a rather heated 
altercation we had in regard to my country that he 
knew the United States and Great Britain very thor- 
oughly indeed, and boasted that the American subma- 
rines, building at Fore River, of which the Germans 
had secured the designs, would be of little value in the 
case of hostilities between Germany and the United 
States, which he then thought imminent. 

It is typical of German mentality that when I met 
him in Berlin, fifteen months later, he had completely 
altered his tune as to the war, and his tone was, "When 



SPIES AND SEMI-SPIES 209^ 

is this dreadful war going to end ?" This, however, 
is by the way. Herr Ulrich is only an instance of the 
solidarity of Pan-Germanism. An English or Amer- 
ican banker visting a foreign country attends to his 
affairs and departs. A German in a similar position is 
a sort of human ferret. An hotel with us is a place of 
residence for transient strangers. The Hotel Adlon 
and others in Berlin are excellent hotels as such, but 
mixed up with spying upon strangers; Herr Adlon, 
senior, a friend of the Kaiser's, assists the Government 
spies when any important or suspicious visitor registers. 
The hotel telephones or any other telephones are syste- 
matically tapped. German soldiers are granted special 
leave for hotel service — that is to say, hotel spying. 

When Belgium and France were invaded, German 
officers led their men through particular districts to 
particular houses with certainty, with knowledge gained 
by previous residence and spying. I know an officer 
with von Kluck's army who received the Iron Cross, 
Eirst Class, for special information he had given to 
von Kluck which facilitated his progress through 
Belgium. 

Any German spies who may be working in England 
to-day have no great difficulty in communicating with 
Germany, though communication is slow and expen- 
sive. They can do so by many routes and many means. 
As it is impossible to isolate Great Britain from Europe, 
it is equally impossible to prevent the conveyance of 
information to the enemy with more or less rapidity. 
Agents of the various belligerent Powers are plentiful 
in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, ^Norway and 
Sweden, and the United States. So far as the maritime 



2 lo THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

countries are concerned, ships leave and enter daily. 
It is quite impossible to control the movements of neu- 
tral sailors and others engaged in these vessels. To 
vs^atch all the movements of all those men v^rould require 
a detective force of impossible dimensions. That in- 
formation comes and goes freely by these channels is 
notorious. That all the sailors are legitimate sailors 
I do not believe, and as a matter of fact I know that 
they are not. 

The transmission of documents via Switzerland, 
Holland,, Denmark, Swfeden, and ISTorway has been 
rendered difficult, but not always impossible. Cabling 
and telegraphing have been made very risky, i 

Judging by the impatience manifested In certain 
quarters in Berlin at delay in getting news of Zeppelin 
raids, for example, I believe that the steps taken to 
delay communication between England and Germany 
have been effective, and delay in spy work is very often 
fatal to its efficiency. The various tentacles of the 
German spy system, its checks and counter-checks, 
whereby one spy watches another; whereby the naval 
spy system has no connection with the military spy 
system, and the political with neither, greatly mars its 
utility. 

Take one great question — ^the question that was all- 
important to Germany as to whether Great Britain 
would or would not enter the war in the event of an 
invasion of Belgium or declaration of war against 
France. I was informed on good Berlin authority 
that from every part of Great Britain and Ireland 
came different reports. So far as London was con- 
cerned. Prince Lichnowsky said "'No." Baron von 



SPIES AND SEMI-SPIES 2 1 1 

Kiihlmann was non-committal. As a result Lichnowsky 
was disgraced and von Kiihlmann continued in favour. 

It is common knowledge in Berlin, and may be else- 
where, that the most surprised person in Germany at 
Great Britain's action was the Kaiser, whose violent 
and continual denunciations of Great Britain's Govern- 
ment, of King Edward, and King George, are repeated 
from mouth to mouth in official circles with a sameness 
that indicates accuracy. 

All the ignorance of Great Britain's intentions in 
1914 is to me the best proof that the German minute 
system of working does not always produce the result 
desired. 

As one with Irish blood in my veins, I found that 
Germany's Irish spy system (largely conducted by hotel 
waiters and active for more than five and twenty years) 
had resulted in hopeless misunderstanding of Irish 
affairs and Irish character, ISTorth and South. 

German spies are as a rule badly paid. The semi- 
spies, such as waiters, were usually "helped" by the 
German Government through waiters' friendly so- 
cieties. It was the duty of these men to communicate 
either in writing or verbally with the Consul, or with 
certain headquarters either in Brussels or Berlin, and 
it is only in accordance with human nature that spies 
of that class, in order to gain a reputation for acumen 
and consequent increase of pay, provided the kind of 
information that pleased the paymaster. That, indeed, 
was one of the causes of the breakdown of the German 
political spy system. A spy waiter or governess in the 
County of Cork, for instance, who assiduously reported 
that a revolution throughout the whole of Ireland would 



2 1 2 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

immediately follow Great Britain's entry into the war, 
received much more attention than the spy waiter in 
Belfast who told the authorities that if Germany went 
to war many Irishmen would join England. Ireland, 
I admit, is very difficult and puzzling ground for spy 
work, but it was ground thoroughly covered by the Ger- 
mans according to their methods. 

The military party in Germany, who are flaying von 
Bethmann-Hollweg for his ignorance of the intentions 
of Britain's Dominions and of Ireland, never cease to 
throw in his teeth the fact that he had millions of 
pounds (not marks) at his back to make the necessary 
investigations, and that he failed. That and his lack 
of the use of ruthlessness, his alleged three days' delay 
to mobilise in 1914, are the principal charges against 
him — charges which, in my opinion, may eventually 
result in his downfall. 

The great mob of semi-spies do not derive their whole 
income from Germany, nor are they, I believe, all actu- 
ally paid at regular intervals. The struggling German 
shopkeeper in England was helped, and I "have no 
doubt is still helped, by occasional sums received for 
business development — sums nominally in the nature of 
donations or loans from other Germans. The army of 
German clerks, who came to England and worked with- 
out salary between 1875 and 1900, received, as a rule, 
their travelling money and an allowance paid direct 
from Germany, or, when in urgent need, from the Con- 
sul in London or elsewhere. Their spying was largely 
commercial, although many of them formed connec- 
tions here which became valuable as Germany began 
to prepare directly for war with Britain. They also 



SPIES AND SEMI-SPIES 213 

helped to spread the knowledge of the English language 
which has enabled Germany to analyse the country by 
means of its books, Blue-books, statistical publications, 
and newspapers. They also brought back with them 
topographical and local knowledge that supplemented 
the military spy work later achieved by the German 
officers who came to live here for spying purposes, and 
the great army of trained spy waiters, who are not to be 
confused with the semi-spies in hotels, who drew small 
sums from Consuls. 

One of the finest pieces of spy work achieved by 
Germany was the obtaining by a German professor of a 
unique set of photographs of the whole of the Scottish 
coast, from north to south. Those photographs show- 
ing every inlet and harbour, are now at the Reichs- 
Marine-Amt (Admiralty) in the Leipsigerplatz. They 
have been reproduced for the use of the ITavy. I do 
not know how they were obtained. I know they are in 
existence, and they were taken for geological purposes. 

Thefts of documents from British Government De- 
partments are not always successfully accomplished by 
German agents, I was told. Some of the more astute 
officials are alleged, especially by the l^aval Depart- 
ment, to have laid traps and supplied the spies with 
purposely misleading designs and codes. 

Assiduous fishing in the troubled waters around the 
Wilhelmstrasse — waters that will become more and 
more troubled as the siege of Germany proceeds — ren- 
ders the gathering of information not so difficult as it 
might appear. 

By sympathising with the critics of the German 
Foreign Office in the violent attacks upon the Govern- 



2 1 4 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

ment by the non-official Social Democrats, a sym- 
pathetic listener can learn a great deal. 

One thing I learned is that, beyond question, the 
German spy system, in that misty period called "after 
the war," will be very completely revised. The huge 
sums of money mentioned in the Keichstag as having 
been expended on secret service have, so far as England 
is concerned, proved of no political value, and the topo- 
graphical and personal knowledge gained would only 
be of service in case of actual invasion and the conse- 
quent exactions of ransoms from individuals, cities, and 
districts. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE IRON HAND IN ALSACE-LOEEAINE 

THE state of affairs in Alsace-Lorraine is one of 
Germany's most carefully hidden secrets. 

In the first months of the war I heard so much talk 
in Germany — talk based upon articles in the Press — of 
how the Alsatians, like the rest of the Kaiser's subjects, 
"rushed to the defence of the Fatherland," that I was 
filled with curiosity to go and see for myself if they 
had suddenly changed. I could hardly believe that 
they had, for I had studied conditions in the "lost 
provinces" before the war. 

Still, the Wilhelmstrasse propaganda was convincing 
millions that the Alsations received the French very 
coldly when they invaded the province to Mulhouse, 
and that they greeted the German troops most heartily 
when they drove back the invader. Indeed, Alsatian 
fathers were depicted as rushing into the streets to cheer 
the German colours, while their wives and daughters 
"were so beside themselves with joy that they hung 
upon the necks of the brave German Michaels, hailing 
them as saviours." 

A pretty picture of the appreciation of the blessings 
of German rule, but was it true ? 

Some months later in Paris, when I stood in the 
Place de la Concorde before the Monument of Strass- 
burg, covered with new mourning wreaths and a Brit- 

215 



2 1 6 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

ish flag now added, I felt an irresistible yearning to 
visit the closely guarded region of secrecy and mystery. 

On my subsequent trip to Germany I planned and 
planned day after day bow I could get into Alsace 
and go about studying actual conditions there. When 
I told one American consul that I wished to go to 
Strassburg to see things for myself, he threw up his 
hands with a gesture of despair and reminded me that 
not an American or other consulate was allowed in 
Alsace-Lorraine, even in peace time. When I replied 
that I was determined to go he looked grave, and said 
earnestly: "Eemember that you are going into a damn 
bad country, and you go at your own risk." 

It is extremely difficult for Germans, to say nothing 
of foreigners, to enter the fortress-city of Strassburg. 
Business must be exceedingly urgent, and a military 
pass is required. A special pass is necessary to remain 
over night. 

How did I get into Strassburg in war-time? 

That is my own story, quite a simple one, but I do 
not propose to tell it now except by analogy, in order 
not to get anybody into trouble. 

During my last voyage across the ocean, which was 
on the Dutch liner Rotterdam, I went into the fo'castle 
one day to talk to a stowaway, a simple young East 
Prussian lad, who had gone to sea and had found him- 
self in the United States at the outbreak of war. 

"How on earth did you manage to pass through the 
iron-clad regulations at the docks of Hoboken (ITew 
York) without a permit, and why did you do it?" I 
asked. 

"I was home-sick," he answered, "and I wanted to 



IRON HAND IN ALSACE-LORRAINE 217 

go back to Germany to see my mother. I got on board 
quite easily. I noticed a gentleman carrying his own 
baggage, and I said to him, 'Can I carry your suit- 
cases on board, sir V " 

Once on board his knowledge of ships told him how 
to hide. 

Having myself stood for more than two hours on the 
quay in a long and growling queue of passengers, I 
could not but be amused by the simple device by which 
this country youth had outwitted the stringent war em- 
barkation regulations of war-time ISTew York. He was 
in due course taken off by the British authorities at 
Palmouth, and is now probably enjoying the sumptuous 
diet provided at the Alexandra Palace or the Isle of 
Man. 

Well, that is not exactly how I got into Strassburg, 
but I got in. 

ISTight had fallen when I crossed the Rhine from 
Baden. I was conscious of an indescribable thrill when 
my feet touched the soil so sacred to all Erenchmen, 
and I somehow felt as if I were walking in fairyland 
as I pushed on in the dark. I had good fortune, 
arising from the fact that a great troop movement 
was taking place, with consequent confusion and 
crowding. 

On all sides from the surrounding girdle of forts the 
searchlights swept the sky, and columns of weary sol- 
diers tramped past me on that four-mile road that led 
into Strassburg. I kept as close to them as possible 
with some other pedestrians, labourers returning from 
the great electric power plant. 

Presently I was alone on the road when suddenly a 



2 1 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

soldier lurched from the shadows and accosted me. I 
let him do the talking. But there was no need to be 
alarmed; he was only a drunken straggler who had got 
separated from his company and wanted to know 
whether any more troops were coming on. 

I had already passed through two cordons of func- 
tionaries outside, and felt little fear in Strasshurg it- 
self, so long as I was duly cautious. I had thought out 
my project carefully. I realised that I must sleep in 
the open; for, unprovided with a pass it was impossible 
for me to go to an hotel. Thankful that I was familiar 
with my surroundings I wended my way to the beauti- 
ful park, the Orangerie, where I made myself com- 
fortable in a clump of bushes and watched the unceas- 
ing flash of searchlights criss-cross in the sky until I 
fell asleep. 

ISText day I continued my investigations, but in Al- 
sace as elsewhere my personal adventures are of no im- 
portance to the world unless, as in some instances, they 
throw light on conditions or are necessary to support 
statements made, whereas the facts set down belong to 
the history of the war. Therefore I shall here sum- 
marise what I found in the old French province. 

The Germans have treated Alsace-Lorraine ruth- 
lessly since the outbreak of war. In no part of the 
Empire is the iron hand so evident. In Strassburg it- 
self all signs of the French have disappeared. Readers 
who know the place well will remark that they were 
vanishing before the war. Externally they have now 
gone altogether, but the hearts and spirit of the people 
are as before. 

What I saw reminded me of the words of a Social 



IRON HAND IN ALSACE-LORRAINE 219 

Democrat friend in Berlin, who told me that the Prus- 
sian Government determined at the beginning of the 
war that they would have no more Alsace-Lorraine 
problem in the future. 

Thej have, therefore, sent the soldiers from these two 
provinces to the most dangerous places at the various 
fronts. One Alsace regiment was hurled again and 
again at the old British Army on the Yser in IN'ovem- 
ber, 1914, until at the end of a week only three oflficers 
and six men were left alive. Some of the most perilous 
work at Verdun was forced upon the Alsatians. 

The Prussian authorities deliberately retain with 
the colours Alsatians and Lorrainers unfit for military 
service, and wounded men are not allowed to return to 
their homes. 

In the little circle to which I was introduced in 
Strassburg I talked with one sorrowing woman, who 
said that her son, obviously in an advanced state of 
tuberculosis, had been called up in spite of protests. 
He died within three weeks. Another young man, suf- 
fering from hgemorrhage of the lungs, was called up. 
He was forced to stand for punishment all one winter's 
day in the snow. In less than two months a merciful 
death in a military hospital released him from the 
Prussian clutch. 

The town of Strassburg is a vast hospital. I do not 
think I have ever seen so many Red Cross flags before. 
They waved from the Imperial Palace, the public li- 
brary, the large and excellent military hospitals, the 
schoolhouses, hotels, and private residences. The 
Orangerie is thronged with convalescent wounded, and 
when hunger directed my steps to the extensive Park 



2 20 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Restaurant I found it^ too, converted into a hospital. 
Even the large concert room was crowded with cots. 

The glorious old sandstone Cathedral, with its gor- 
geous fagade and lace-like spire, had a Red Cross flag 
waving over the nave while a wireless apparatus was 
installed on the spire. Sentries paced backwards and 
forwards on the uncompleted tower, which dominates 
the region to the Vosges. 

The whole object of Prussia is to eliminate every 
vestige of French influence in the two provinces. The 
use of the French language, whether in speech or writ- 
ing, is strictly forbidden. To print, sell, offer for sale, 
or purchase anything in French is to commit a crime. 
Detectives are everywhere on the alert to discover vio- 
lations of the law. All French trade names have been 
changed to their German equivalents. For example, 
the sign Guillaume Rondee, Tailleur, has come down, 
and if the tradesman wants to continue in his business 
Wilhelm Bondee, Schneider, must go up. He may have 
a quantity of valuable business forms or letter-heads in 
French — even if they contain only one French word 
they must be destroyed. And those intimate friends 
who are accustomed to address him by his first name 
must bear in mind that it is Wilhelm. 

Eloise was a milliner at the outbreak of the war. To- 
day, if she desires to continue her business, she is 
obliged to remove the final "e" and thus Germanise her 
name. 

After having been fed in Berlin on stories of Alsatian 
loyalty to the Kaiser, I was naturally puzzled by these 
things. If Guillaume had rushed into the street to 
cheer the German colours when the French were driven 



IRON HAND IN ALSACE-LORRAINE 221 

back, and Eloise had hung upon the neck of the German 
Michael, was it not rather ungrateful of the Prussians 
subsequently to persecute them even to the stamping 
out of their names ? I^ot only that, but to be so efficient 
in hate that even inscriptions on tombstones may no 
longer be written in French? 

Alsace-Lorraine is to be literally Elsass-Lothringen 
to the last detail. 

The truth of the matter is that the Alsatians greeted 
the Erench as deliverers and were depressed when they 
fell back. This, as might be expected, exasperated 
Prussia, for it was a slap in the face for her system of 
government by oppression. Thus, at the very time that 
the Nachrichtendienst (IlTews Service) connected with 
the Wilhelmstrasse was instructing Germans and neu- 
trals that the Alsatians' enthusiastic reception of Ger- 
man troops was evidence of their approval of German 
rule, the military authorities were posting quite a dif- 
ferent kind of notice in Alsace, a notice which reveals 
the true story. 

"During the transport of Erench prisoners of war a 
portion of the populace has given expression to a feel- 
ing of sympathy for these prisoners and for Erance. 
This is to inform all whom it may concern that such 
expressions of sympathy are criminal and punishable, 
and that, should they again take place, the persons tak* 
ing part in them will be proceeded against by court- 
martial, and the rest of the inhabitants will be sum- 
marily deprived of the privileges they now enjoy. 

"All crowding around prisoners of war, conversations 
with them, cries of welcome and demonstrations of sym- 
pathy of all kinds, as well as the supply of gifts, is 



222 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

strictly prohibited. It is also forbidden to remain 
standing while prisoners are being conducted or to fol- 
low the transport." 

The result of the persecution of the Erench-speaking 
portion of the population has been a boomerang for 
Prussia. The Germans of the region, most of whom 
never eared much for Prussia, are now bitterly hostile 
to her, and thus it is that all citizens of Alsace, whether 
French or German, who go into other parts of Germany 
are under the same police regulations as alien enemies. 

In order to permit military relentlessness to proceed 
smoothly without any opposition, the very members of 
the local Parliament, the Strassburg Diet, are abso- 
lutely muzzled. They have been compelled to promise 
not to criticise at any time, or in any way, the military 
control ; otherwise their Parliament will be closed. As 
for the Local Councils, they are not allowed to discuss 
any political questions whatsoever. A representative 
of the police is present at every meeting to enforce this 
rule to the letter. 

The people do not even get the sugared Reichstag re- 
ports, as does the rest of Germany. These are specially 
re-censored at Mulhouse. The official reports of the 
General Staff are often days late, and sometimes do not 
appear at all. In no part of the war zone is there so 
much ignorance about what is happening at the various 
fronts as in the two "lost provinces." 

Those who do not sympathise with Germany in her 
career of conquest upon which she so joyfully and ruth- 
lessly embarked in August, 1914, may well point to 
Alsace-Lorraine as an argument against the probability 



IRON HAND IN ALSACE-LORRAINE 223 

of other peoples delighting in the rule which she would 
force upon them. 

She has become more intolerant, not less, in the old 
French provinces. It will be recalled that by the Treaty 
of Frankfurt, signed in March, 1871, they became a 
"Reichsland," that is, an Imperial Land, not a self- 
governing State like Bavaria, Saxony, or Wiirttemberg. 
As Bismarck bluntly and truly said to the Alsatian 
deputies in the Reichstag: "It is not for your sakes 
nor in your interests that we conquered you, but in the 
interests of the Empire." 

For more than forty years Prussia has employed 
every means but kindness to Germanise the conquered 
territory. But though she has hushed every syllable of 
French in the elementary schools and forced the chil- 
dren to learn the German language and history only; 
though freedom of speech, liberty of the Press, rights 
of public meeting, have been things unknown; though 
even the little children playing at sand castles have 
been arrested and fined if in their enthusiasm they 
raised a tiny French flag, or in the excitement of their 
mock contest cried "Vive la France !" ; though men and 
women have been fined and throvni into prison for the 
most trifling manifestations that they had not become 
enthusiastic for their rulers across the Rhine; and 
though most of the men filling Government positions — 
and they are legion — are Prussians, the Alsatians pre- 
serve their individuality and remain uncowed. 

Having failed in two score of years to absorb them 
by force, Prussia during the war has sought by scien- 
tific methods carried to any extreme to blot out for ever 
themselves and their spirit. 



224 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

To do the German credit, I believe that he is sincere 
when he believes that his rule would be a benefit to 
others and that he is genuinely perplexed when he dis- 
covers that other people do not like his regulations. The 
attitude which I have found in Germany towards other 
nationalities was expressed by Treitschke when he said, 
"We Germans know better what is good for Alsace than 
the unhappy people themselves." 

The German idea of how she should govern other 
people is an anachronism. This idea, which I have 
heard voiced all over Germany, was aptly set forth be- 
fore the war by a speaker on "The Decadence of the 
British Empire," when he sought to prove such deca- 
dence by citing the fact that there was only one British 
soldier to every 4,000 of the people of India. "Why," 
he concluded, "Germany has more soldiers in Alsace- 
Lorraine alone than Great Britain has in all India." 

That is a bad spirit for the world, and it is a bad 
spirit for Germany. She herself will receive one great 
blessing from the war if it is hammered out of her. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW 

rilHE handling of the always difficult question of the 
•■■ eternal feminine was firmly tackled by the Ger- 
man Government almost immediately after the out- 
break of war. 

To understand the differences between the situation 
here and in Germany it is necessary first to have a lit- 
tle understanding of the German woman and her status. 
With us, woman is treated as something apart, some- 
thing on a pedestal. In Germany and in Austria the 
situation is reversed. The German man uses his home 
as a place to eat and sleep in, and be waited upon. The 
attitude of the German woman towards the man is 
nearly always that of the obedient humble servant to 
command. If a husband and wife are out shopping it 
is often enough the wife who carries the parcels. In 
entering any public place the middle-class man walks 
first and the wife dutifully follows. When leaving, it 
is the custom for the man to be helped with his coat be- 
fore the woman. Indeed, she is generally left to shift 
for herself. 

Woman is the under sex, the very much under sex, in 
Germany, regarded by the man as his plaything or as 
his cook-wife and nurse of his children; and she will 
continue to be the under sex until she develops pride 
enough to assert herself. She accepts her inferiority 

225 



226 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

"without murmur; indeed, she often impresses one as 
delighting in it. 

It is no dishonour for a girl of the middle or lower 
class to have a liaison with some admirer, particularly 
if he is a student or a young ofiicer ; in fact, it is quite 
the proper thing for him to be welcomed by her parents, 
although it is perfectly well understood that he has not 
the slightest idea of marrying her. The girls are doing 
their part to help along the doctrine of free love, the 
preaching and practice of which are so greatly increas- 
ing in the modern German State. 

After marriage the woman's influence in the world is 
nearly zero. The idolatry of titles is carried to an 
extreme in Germany which goes from the pathetic to 
the ludicrous. One does not address a German lady by 
her surname, as Erau Schmidt, but by her husband's 
title or position, as Erau Hauptmann (Mrs. Captain), 
Erau Doktor, Erau Professor, Erau Backermeister 
(Mrs. Bakershopowner), or even Erau Schornstein- 
fegermeister (Mrs. Master Chimneysweep), although 
her husband may be master over only some occasional 
juvenile assistant. In military social functions, and 
they are of daily occurrence in garrison towns, Mrs. 
Colonel naturally takes precedence in all matters over 
the wives and daughters of other members of the regi- 
ment. Contemplate the joyful existence of a vivacious 
American or British girl, accustomed to the respectful 
consideration of the other sex, married to a young lieu- 
tenant and ruled over by all the wives of his superior 
officers ! 

To try to marry money is considered praiseworthy 
and correct in German military circles. In Prussia a 



THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW 227 

lieutenant in peace times receives for the first three 
years £60 a year, from the fourth to the sixth year £85, 
from the seventh to the ninth year £99, from the tenth 
to the twelfth year £110, and after the twelfth year 
£120 a year. A captain receives from the first to the 
fourth year £170, from the fifth to the eighth year 
£230, and the ninth year and after £255. 

Thus it is that no young lady, however ugly, need be 
without an officer husband if she has money enough to 
buy one. If he has not a private income, the Govern- 
ment forbids him to marry until his pay is sufficient. 
That point is seldom reached before he is thirty-five 
years of age. Marriage helps him out of the difficulty, 
and since the army is so deified in the Fatherland that 
the highest ambition of nearly every girl is to marry an 
officer, his opportunity of trading shoulder-knots for a 
dowry is excellent. 

The efforts of some women to increase their fortune 
sufficiently to enable them to invest in a military better- 
half are pathetic from an Anglo-Saxon point of view. 
One woman who requested an interview with me said 
that as I was an American correspondent I might be 
able to advise her how she could dispose of a collection 
of autographs to some American millionaire. She ex- 
plained that her financial condition was not so good as 
formerly, but she was desperate to better it as she was 
in love with an officer, who, although he loved her, 
would have to marry another if she could not increase 
her income. The autographs she showed me were from 
Prince Henry of Prussia, Prince Biilow and other not- 
ables, and most of them were signed to private letters. 

Take the story of Marie and Fritz, both of whom I 



228 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

knew in a garrison city in eastern Germany, I^othing 
could illustrate better the difference between the Ger- 
man attitude and our own on certain matters. She 
was a charming, lovable girl of nineteen engaged to an 
impecunious young lieutenant a few years older. They 
moved in the best circle in the Gamisonstadt. 

Two years after their engagement her father lost 
heavily in business and could no longer afford to settle 
£5,000 on her to enable them to marry. 

It mattered not ; theirs was true love, and they would 
wait until his pay was sufficient. 

All went well until another girl, as unattractive as 
Marie was charming, decided that she would try to buy 
Eritz as a husband. After four months of her acquaint- 
ance he found time at the end of a day's drill to write a 
few lines informing the young lady, nine years of whose 
life he had monopolised, of his intention to marry the 
new rival. Life became black for Marie, the more as 
she realised that she and Fritz had only to wait a little 
longer and his pay would be sufficient. 

How would Fritz be regarded in this country, and 
how was he regarded according to German standards ? 
That is what makes the story worth telling. With us 
such a man as Fritz would have been cut socially and 
there would have been great sympathy for the sweet 
girl whose years had been wasted. But on the other 
side of the Ehine women exist solely for the comfort 
of men. In militaristic Germany Fritz lost not an iota 
of the esteem of his friends of either sex ; as for Marie, 
she had failed in a fair game, that was all. The girl's 
mother even excused his conduct by saying that he was 
ambitious to get ahead in the army. Like most of her 



THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW 229 

sex in Germany she lias been reared to venerate the 
uniform so much that anything done by the man who 
wears it is quite excusable. Indeed, Marie's mother 
still listens with respectful approval at KaffeeMatsch 
to Fritz's mother when she boasts of what her son is 
doing as a major over Turkish troops. 

German women have many estimable qualities, but a 
proper amount of independence and pride is noticeably 
foreign to their natures. Is it surprising that the Amer- 
ican girl of German parents requires only a very brief 
visit to the Fatherland to convince her that the career 
of the Hausfrau is not attractive. 

On the whole, the efforts of the German woman have 
almost doubled the national output of war energy. Ex- 
cept in Berlin few are idle, and these only among the 
newly-rich class. The women of the upper classes, both 
in Germany and Austria, are either in hospitals or are 
making comforts for the troops. Women have always 
worked harder in Germany and at more kinds of work 
than in Britain or the States, and what, judging by 
London illustrated papers, seems to be a novelty — the 
engagement of women in agricultural and other pur- 
suits — is just the natural way of things in Germany. 
It should always be remembered, when estimating Ger- 
man man-power and German ability to hold out, that 
the bulk of the work of civil life is being done by pris- 
oners and women. A German woman and a prisoner 
of war, usually a Russian, working side by side in the 
fields is a common sight throughout Germany. 

It is the boast of the Germans that their building 
constructions are going on as usual. I have myself 



230 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

seen plenty of evidence of this, such as the grading of 
the Isar at Munich, the completion of the colossal rail- 
way station at Leipzig, the largest in Germany, the 
construction of the new railway station at Gorlitz, the 
complete building since the war of the palatial Hotel 
Astoria at Leipzig, also two gigantic new steel and con- 
crete palaces in the same city for the semi-annual fair, 
the erection of a new Hamburg-America Line oflSce 
building adjacent to the old one and dwarfing it. The 
slaughter-house annexes, contracted for in days of 
peace, continue their slow growth, although Berlin has 
no present need for such extension in these half-pound- 
of-meat-a-week times. 

The construction of the I^ord-Siid Bahn of the under- 
ground railway, for linking up the north and south sec- 
tions of Berlin has proceeded right along, the women 
down In the pit with picks and shovels doing the heavy 
work of navvies. That department of the German Gov- 
ernment whose duty it is to enlighten iN'eutrals is not 
too proud of the fact, surprisingly enough. An Amer- 
ican kinematograph operator, Mr. Edwards, of Mr. 
Hearst's papers, was desirous of taking a film of these 
women navvies — ^heavy, sad creatures they are. The 
Government stepped in and suggested that, although 
they had no objection to a personally conducted and 
posed picture — in which the women would no doubt 
smile to order — ^they could not permit the realities of 
this unwomanly task to be shown in the form of a truth- 
telling moving picture. 

German authorities are utilising every kind of 
woman. The social evil, against which the Bishop of 
London and others are agitating in England, was effec- 



THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW 231 

tivelj dealt with by the German authorities, not only 
for the sake of the health of the troops, but in the in- 
terests of munitions. Women of doubtful character 
were first told that if found in the neighbourhood of 
barracks or in cafes they were liable to be arrested, and 
when so found were immediately removed to their na- 
tive places, and put into the nearest cartridge filling or 
other shop. The double effect has been an increased 
output of munitions for the army and increased health 
for the soldier, and such scenes as one may witness in 
Piccadilly or other London streets at night have been 
effectively squelched by the strong Prussian hand, with 
benefit to all concerned. 

I am not speaking of German morals in general, 
which are notorious. I merely state the practical way 
the Germans turn the women of the street into useful 
munition makers. 

The lot of the German woman has been much more 
difficult than the lot of her sister in the Allied countries, 
for upon her has fallen the great and increasing burden 
of the struggle to get enough to eat for her household. 
In practically all classes of Germany it has been the 
custom of the man to come home from his work, 
whether in a Government office, bank, or factory, for 
his midday meal, usually followed by an hour's sleep. 

The German man is often a greedy fellow as regards 
meals. Tor him special food is always provided, and 
the wife and children sit round patiently watching him 
eat it. He expects special food to-day. The soldier, 
of course, is getting it, and properly, but the stay-at- 
homes, who are men over forty-five or lads under nine- 
teen, still get the best of such food as can be got. Ex- 



232 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

ceptions to the nineteen to forty-five rule are very few 
indeed. l!^ational work in Germany means war work 
pure and simple, and now the women are treated ex- 
actly as the men in this respect, except that they will 
not be sent to the front. 

In January, 1917, Germany at length began formally 
to organise the women of the country to help in the 
war. Each of the six chief army "commands" through- 
out the Empire now has a woman attached to it as 
Directress of the "Division for Women's Service." 
Hitherto, as in England, war work by women has been 
entirely voluntary. The Patriotic Auxiliary Service 
(Mass Levy) Law is not compulsory so far as female 
labour is concerned. German women, however, having 
proclaimed that they regard themselves liable for 
national service under the spirit if not the letter 
of the law, it has finally been decided to mobilise 
their services on a more systematic basis than in the 
past. 

!N'one of the countless revolutions in German life 
produced by the war outstrips in historical importance 
this official linking up of women with the military ma- 
chine. Equally striking is the fact that the directresses 
of Women's Service, who hold office in Berlin, Breslau, 
Magdeburg, Coblenz, Konigsberg, and Karlsruhe, are 
all feminist leaders and promoters of the women's eman- 
cipation movement. The directress for the Mark of 
Brandenburg (the Berlin-Potsdam district) is an able 
Jewess named Dr. Alice Salomon, who is one of the 
pioneers of the German women's movement. The main 
object of the "Women's Service" Department is to or- 
ganise female labour for munitions and other work 



THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW 233 

from which men can be liberated for the fighting 
line. 

I have nothing but praise and admiration for the way 
in which the German women have thrown themselves 
into this struggle. Believing implicitly as they have 
been told — and with the exception of the lower classes, 
after more than two years of war, they believe every- 
thing the Government tells them — ^that this war was 
carefully prepared by "Sir Grey" (Lord Grey of Fallo- 
don), "the man without a conscience," as he is called 
in Germany, they feel that they are helping to fight a 
war for the defence of their homes and their children, 
and the cynics at the German Foreign Office, who man- 
ufacture their opinions for them, rub this in in sermons 
from the pastors, novels, newspaper articles, faked 
cinema films, garbled extracts from Allied newspapers, 
books, and bogus photographs, Reichstag orations by 
Bethmann-Hollweg, and the rest of it, not forgetting the 
all-important lectures by the professors, who are un- 
ceasing in their efforts all over Germany. 

To show how little the truth of the war is under- 
stood by the German women, I may mention an inci- 
dent that occurred at the house of people of the official 
class at which I was visiting one day. The eldest son, 
who was just back from the Somme trenches, suffering 
from slight shell-shock, brought home a copy of a Lon- 
don illustrated paper, which had been thrown across 
the trenches by the English. In this photograph there 
was a picture of a long procession of German prisoners 
captured by the English. The daughter of the house, 
a well-read girl of nineteen, blazed up at the sight of 
this photograph, and showed it to her mother, who was 



234 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

equally surprised. The son of the house remarked, 
"Surely you know the English have taken a great many 
prisoners ?" 

His mother, realising her mistake, looked confused, 
and simply said, "I didn't think." In other words, the 
obvious fact that Germans were sometimes captured 
had never been pointed out to her by the Government, 
and most Germans are accustomed to think only what 
they are officially told to think. 

While there are an increasing number of doubters 
among the German males as to the accuracy of state- 
ments issued by the Government, in the class with 
which I mostly came into contact in Germany, the 
women are blindfold and believe all they are told. So 
strong, too, is the influence of Government propaganda 
on the people in Germany that in a town where I met 
two English ladies married to Germans, they believed 
that Germany had Verdun in her grasp, had annihi- 
lated the British troops (mainly black) on the Somme, 
had defeated the British Fleet in the battle of Skager- 
rak (Jutland), and reduced the greater part of the for- 
tifications, docks, and munition factories of London to 
ruins by Zeppelins. 

Their anguish for the fate of their English relations 
was sincere, and they were intensely hopeful that 
Britain would accept any sort of terms of peace in 
order to prevent the invasion which some people in Ger- 
many still believe possible. 

At the beginning of the war the click of the knitting 
needle was heard everywhere; shop-girls knitted while 
waiting for customers, women knitted in trams and 
trains, at theatres, in churches, and, of course, in the 



\ 



THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW 235 

home. The knitting is ceasing now for the very prac- 
tical reason that the military authorities have comman- 
deered all the wool for the clothing of the soldiery. A 
further reason for the stoppage of such needlework is 
the fact that women are engaged in countless forms 
of definite war work. 

Upon the whole it is beyond question that the Ger- 
man women are not standing the losses as well as the 
British women. I have been honoured in England by 
conversations with more than one lady who has lost 
many dear ones. The attitude is quieter here than in 
Germany, and is not followed by the peace talk which 
such events produce in German households. 

What surprises me in England is the fact that the 
word "peace" is hardly ever mentioned anywhere, 
whereas in any German railway train or tramcar the 
two dominant words are Friede (peace) ahd Essen 
(food). The peace is always a German idea of peace 
— for the extreme grumblers do not talk freely in pub- 
lic — and the food talk is not always the result of the 
shortage, but of the great difficulty in getting what is 
to be obtained, together with the increasing monotony of 
the diet. 

It must not be supposed, however, that the life of 
feminine Germany is entirely a gloomy round of duty 
and suffering. Among the women of the poor, things 
are as bad as they can be. They are getting higher 
wages than ever, but the food usury and the blockade 
rob them of the increase. 

The middle and upper classes still devote a good deal 
of time to the feminine pursuits of shopping and dress- 
insr. The outbreak of war hit the fashions at a curious 



236 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

moment. Paris had just abandoned the tight skirt, and 
a comical struggle took place between the Government 
and those women who desired to be correctly gowned. 

The Government said, "In order to avoid waste of 
material, you must stick to the tight skirt," and the 
amount of cloth allowed was carefully prescribed. 
Women's desire to be in the mode was, however, too 
powerful for even Prussianism, Copies of French 
fashion magazines were smuggled in from Paris 
through Switzerland, passed from dressmaker to dress- 
maker, and house to house, and despite the military 
instructions and the leather shortage, wide skirts and 
high boots began to appear everywhere. 

This feminine ebullition was followed by an appeal 
from the Government to abandon all enemy example 
and to institute new German fashions of their own 
making. Models were exhibited in shop windows of 
what were called the "old and elegant Viennese fash- 
ions." These, however, were found to be great con- 
sumers of material, and the women still continued to 
imitate Paris. 

The day before I left Berlin I heard an amusing 
conversation in the underground railway between two 
women, one of whom was talking about her hat. She 
told her friend that she found the picture of the hat in 
a smuggled fashion paper, and had it made at her mil- 
liner's and she was obviously very pleased with her 
taste. 

The women in the munition factories, who number 
millions, wear a serviceable kind of uniform overall. 

The venom of the German women in regard to the 
war is quite in contrast to the feeling expressed by Eng- 



THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW 237 

lish women. Tliej have read a great deal about British 
and American women and they cordially detest them. 
Their point of view is very difficult to explain. When 
I have told German women that in many States in my 
country women have votes, their reply is, "How vul- 
gar!" Their attitude towards the whole question of 
women's franchise is that it is a form of Anglo-Saxon 
lack of culture and lack of authority. 

The freedom accorded to English and American girls 
is entirely misunderstood. A Dutch girl who, in the 
presence of some German ladies, expressed admiration 
for certain aspects of English feminine life, was fiercely 
and venomously attacked by that never-failing weapon, 
the German woman's tongue. The poor thing, who 
mildly expressed the view that hockey was a good game 
for girls, and the fine complexions and elegant walk of 
English women were due to outdoor sports, was reduced 
almost to tears. 

The intolerance of German women is almost impos- 
sible to express. I know a case of one young girl, a 
German-American, whose parents returned to Ham- 
burg, who declined to repeat the ridiculous German 
formula, "Gott strafe England," and stuck to her point, 
with the result that she was not invited to that circle 
again. 

To the cry "Gott strafe England" has been added 
"Gott strafe Amerika," the latter being as popular with 
the German women as the German men. The pastors, 
professors, and the Press have told the German women 
that their husbands and sons and lovers are being killed 
by American shells. A man who ought to know better, 
like Prince Rupert of Bavaria, made a public statement 



23 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

that half of the Allies' ammunition is American. After 
the British and French autumn offensive of 1915 the 
feeling against America on the part of German women 
became so intense that the American flag had to be 
withdra\vn from the American hospital at Munich, al- 
though that hospital, supported bj German-American 
funds, has done wonderful work for the German 
wounded. 

Arguments with German women about the war are 
absolutely futile. They follow the war very closely 
after their own method, and believe that any defeats, 
such as on the Somme or Verdun, are tactical rear- 
rangements of positions, dictated by the wisdom of the 
General Staff, and so long as no Allied troops are upon 
German soil so long will the German populace believe 
in the invincibility of its army. I am speaking always 
of the middle and upper classes, who are on the whole, 
but with increasing exceptions, as intensely pro-war as 
the lower classes are anti-war. 

The modern German Bible is the Zeitung (the rough 
translation of which is "newspaper") and German 
women are even more fanatical than the men, if pos- 
sible, in their worship of it. 

On one occasion, when I candidly remarked that von 
Papen and Boy-Ed came back to the Fatherland for 
certain unbecoming acts, some of which I enumerated, 
a Frau Hauptmann jumped to her feet and, after the 
customary brilliant manner of German argument, 
shrieked that I was a liar. She declared that their 
Zeitung had said nothing about the charges I men- 
tioned, therefore they were not true. She further- 
more promised to report me to Colonel at the 



THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW 239 

Kriegsministerium (War Office), and she kept her 
word. 

The neglect, and, in some cases refusal, to attend the 
British wounded by German nurses are a sign both of 
their own intensity of feeling in regard to the war and 
their entirely different mentality. Again and again 
T have heard German women say, "In the event of a 
successful German invasion of England the women will 
accompany the men, and teach the women of England 
that war is war." Their remarks in regard to the 
women of my own country are equally offensive. In- 
deed, States that Germany regards as neutral, and who 
are treated by the officially controlled German Press 
with a certain amount of respect, are loathed by Ger- 
man women. Their attitude is that all who are not on 
their side are their enemies. American women who are 
making shells for the British, Erench, and Russians are 
just as much the enemies of Germany as the Allied sol- 
diers and sailors. One argument often used is that to 
be strictly neutral America should make no munitions 
at all, but it would not be so bad, say the Germans, if 
half the American ammunition went to Germany and 
half to the Allies. 

I lost my temper once by saying to one elderly red- 
faced Erau, "Since you have beaten the British at sea, 
why don't you send your ships to fetch it?" "Our 
fleet," she said, "is too busy choking the British Fleet 
in its safe hiding places to afford time to go to Amer- 
ica. You will see enough of our fleet one day, remem- 
ber that !" 

Summing up this brief and very sketchy analysis of 
German femininity in the war, I reiterate views ex- 



240 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

pressed on previous visits to Germany, that German 
women are not standing the anxiety of the war as well 
as those of France and Britain. 

They have done noble work for the Fatherland, hut 
the grumblings of the lower third of the population are 
now such as have not been heard since 1848. German 
officials in the Press Department of the Foreign Office 
try to explain the unrest away to foreign correspond- 
ents like myself, but many thinking Germans are sur- 
prised and troubled by this unexpected manifestation 
on the part of those who for generations have been al- 
most as docile and easily managed as children, 



CHAPTER XX 

THE WAR SLAVES OF ESSEN 

ESSEN, the noisiest town in tlie world, bulks largely 
in the imagination of the Entente Allies, but "Es- 
sen" is not merely one city. It is a centre or capital of 
a whole group of arsenal towns. Look at your map of 
Germany, and you will see how temptingly near they 
are to the Dutch frontier. Look at the proximity of 
Holland and Essen, and you will understand the Dutch 
fear of Germany. You will grasp also the German 
fear, real as well as pretended, that the battle of the 
Somme may one day be accompanied by a thrust at the 
real heart of Germany, which is Westphalia^ — ^West- 
phalia with its coal and iron and millions of trained 
factory hands. 

I saw when in Germany extracts from speeches by 
British politicians in which the bombing of Essen by 
air was advocated. Perhaps the task would have been 
easier if the bombing had come first and the speeches 
afterwards. Eorewarned, forearmed ; and Essen is now 
very much armed. 

All German railroads seem to lead to this war 
monster. Attached to almost every goods train in Ger- 
many you will see wagons marked "Essen — special 
train." Wagons travel from the far ends of Austria 
and into Switzerland, which is showing its strict neu- 
trality by making munitions for both sides. 

241 



242 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

On the occasion of my second visit to Essen during 
the war I arrived at night. It was before the time of 
the bombing speeches, and, though it was well into the 
hours when the world is asleep, the sky glowed red with 
a glare that could be seen for full thirty miles. My 
German companion glowed also, as he opened the car- 
riage window and bade me join him in a peep at what 
we were coming to. "This is the place where we make 
the stuff to blow the world to pieces," he proudly 
boasted. "If our enemies could only see that the war 
would be over." 

I suggested that Essen was not the only arsenal. 
There were, for instance, Woolwich, Glasgow, N^ew- 
castle, Creusot, and in my own strictly neutral country 
Bethlehem, Bridgeport, and one or two other humble 
hamlets. He brushed aside my remarks, "But we have 
also here in this very region Dortmund, Bochum, Wit- 
ten, Duisburg, Krefeld, Diisseldorf, Solingen, Elber- 
feld and Barmen." 

As we approached nearer, freight trains, military 
trains and passenger trains were everywhere. Officers 
and soldiers crowded the station platforms, and though 
it was night the activity of these Rhenish- Westphalian 
arsenal towns impressed me with the belief that unless 
the British blockade can strictly exclude essentials, such 
as copper and nickel, especially from their roaring fac- 
tories, the war will be needlessly protracted. 

It is not necessary to be long in Rhineland and West- 
phalia to realise that a shortage in these and other es- 
sentials is much more disturbing to the heads of these 
wonderful organisations than the fear of aerial bombs. 

On the occasion of my first war-time visit to Essen 



THE WAR SLAVES OF ESSEN 243 

it would have been easy to have bombed it. There is 
an old saying that a shoemaker's children are the worst 
shod, and the display of anti-aircraft guns which has 
since manifested itself was then non-existent. The 
town was ablaze. It is still ablaze, but the lighting has 
been cunningly arranged to deceive nocturnal visitors, 
and any aeroplanes approaching Essen at a height of 
twelve or fifteen thousand feet would find it hard to dis- 
cover which was Essen, and which Borbeck, and which 
was Steele. 

Miilheim is easily found, because it is close to the 
Eiver Euhr. We had to halt a long time outside the 
station of Essen, so great was the pressure of trafiic. 
The cordon surrounding the entrance to the city is some 
distance away, and having passed that safely I had no 
fear of being again interrogated. 

I told the hotel manager that I was a travelling news- 
paper correspondent, and should like to see as many as 
possible of the wonders of his town. After praise of 
his hostelry, which, as the sub-manager said, was too 
good for the Essenites, I set out on my travels to see 
the sights of the city, foremost among them being the 
regulation statue of William I. 

It was easy to find Krupps, for I had only to turn 
my steps towards the lurid panorama in the sky. As I 
came nearer, not only my sense of sight but my sense 
of hearing told me that Germany's great arsenal was 
throbbing with unwonted life. The crash and din of 
mighty steam hammers and giant anvils, the flame and 
flash of roaring blast furnaces, the rumbling of great 
railway trucks trundling raw and finished products in 
and out, chimneys of dizzy height belching forth mon- 



244 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

ster coils of Cimmerian smoke, seem to transport one 
from the prosaic valley of the Euhr into the deafening 
realm of Vulcan and Thor. The impression of Krupps 
by night is ineffaceable. The very air exudes iron and 
energy. You can almost imagine yourself in the midst 
of a thunderous artillery duel. You are at any rate in 
no doubt that the myriad of hands at work behind those 
carefully guarded walls are even more vital factors in 
the war than the men in the firing line. The blaze and 
roar fill one with the overpowering sense of the Kaiser's 
limitless resources for war-making. For you must roll 
Sheffield and ISTewcastle-on-Tyne and Barrow-in-Fur- 
ness into one clanging whole to visualise Essen-on-the- 
Kuhr. 

In some way Essen is unlike any other town I have 
visited. It has its own internal network of railways, 
running to and from the various branches of Krupps, 
and as the trains pass across the streets they naturally 
block the traffic for some minutes. They are almost 
continuous and the pedestrians' progress is slow, but it 
is exciting, for it is here that one realises what it means 
to be at war with Germany. If the resolution of the 
German people were as rigid as the steel in the great 
cranes and rolling mills, the Allied task would be im- 
possible. 

The brief noon-tide rush of the workpeople resembles 
our six o'clock rush in America towards Brooklyn 
Bridge. I can say no more than that. There is noth- 
ing like it in London. The home-going crowd round 
the Bank of England does not compare with the Essen 
crowd, because the crowd at Essen is for a few minutes 
more concentrated. Old and young, men and women. 



THE WAR SLAVES OF ESSEN 245 

refugees and prisoners of several nationalities (I saw 
no British), Poles and Russians predominating, grimy, 
worn, and weary, they pour out in a solid mass, and 
cover the tramcars like bees in swarming time. The 
pedestrians gradually break up into little companies, 
most of them going to Kronenberg and other model col- 
onies founded by Frau Krupp — "Bertha," as she is 
affectionately called throughout Germany. The highest 
honour the Germans can bestow upon her is to name 
their 16-inch howitzer "Fat Bertha." Frau Bertha 
Krupp, it may be well to recall, was the heiress to tho 
great Krupp fortune, and on her marriage in 1906 to 
Herr von Bohlen und Halbach, a diplomatist, he 
changed his name to Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. 

Though a private corporation with £12,500,000 share 
capital owned by the "Cannon Queen" and her fam- 
ily, it is to all intents and purposes a Government De- 
partment just as Woolwich Arsenal is an adjunct of the 
British War Office. In the past, as the elaborate cen- 
tenary (1910) memorial proudly recites, fifty-two Gov- 
ernments throughout the world have bought Krupp 
guns, armour, shells, and warships, with Germany by 
far the biggest customer. 

Out of the stupendous profits of war machines the 
Krupps have built workpeople's houses that, as regards 
material comfort, would not be easy to excel. These 
houses are provided with ingenious coal-saving stoves, 
that might well be copied elsewhere, for though Essen 
is in the coal centre of Germany, they are just as care- 
ful about coal as though it were imported from the 
other end of the world. 

Frau Bertha and her husband (a simple and modest 



246 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

man, who is, I was informed, entirely in the hands of 
his specialists, and who has the wisdom to let well 
alone) have put up a big fight with Batocki, the food 
dictator. The semi-famine had not reached its height 
when I was in Essen, and the suffering was not great 
there. A munition-maker working in any of the Rhen- 
ish-Westphalian towns is regarded by Germans as a 
soldier. As the war has proceeded he has been subject 
to continuous combing out. 

The amount of food allowed to those engaged in 
these great factories and rolling mills is, I estimate, 33 
per cent, more than that allowed to the rest of the civil 
population. In all the notices issued throughout Ger- 
many in regard to further food restrictions, there is 
appended the line, "This change is necessary owing to 
the need for fully supplying your brothers in the army 
and the munition works." 

Essen is a town that before the war had a population 
exceeding 300,000. A conservative estimate makes the 
figure to-day nearly half a million. The Krupp Com- 
pany employ about 120,000. A prevalent illusion is 
that Krupps confine their war-time effort exclusively to 
making war material. That is a mistake. A consider- 
able part of Krupp' s work is the manufacture of ar- 
ticles which can be exchanged for food and other prod- 
ucts in neighbouring countries, thus taking the place of 
gold. At Liibeck, I saw the quays crowded with the 
products of Essen in the shape of steel girders and other 
building machinery going to Sweden in exchange for 
oil, lime from Gotland, iron ore, paper, wood, and food 
products. 

A mining engineer of the great mines at Kiruna, 



THE WAR SLAVES OF ESSEN 247 

Lapland, told me that he had just given an order for 
steam shovels from the Westphalian manufacturers, 
who are also sending into Holland knives and scissors 
and other cutlery and tools. 

Germany's principal bargaining commodities with 
contiguous neutral nations are steel building materials, 
coal, and dye-stuffs. Coal dug in Belgium by Belgian 
miners is a distinct asset for Germany, when she ex- 
changes it for Swiss cattle, Dutch cheese, and Swedish 
wood. When we consider that the great industrial 
combinations of Rhineland and Westphalia are not 
only reaping enormous munition profits, but supply the 
steel and coal which form the bulk of German war-time 
exports, we can easily understand why some Social 
Democrats grew dissatisfied because the all-powerful 
National Liberals resisted a war profits tax for two 
years. It is noteworthy that several of the more out- 
spoken German editors have been suspended for attack- 
ing these profiteers. 

I should qualify this statement of exports slightly by 
saying that they pertained up to November, 1916. The 
effort to put more than ten million men into military 
uniform resulted not only in the slave-raids in Belgium 
but in a concentration in munition output that stopped 
further exports of steel products and coal on a large 
scale. 

We should always remember in this great war of 
machinery that Germany secured a tremendous advan- 
tage at the expense of Trance at the outset when she 
occupied the most important Trench iron region of 
Longwy-Briey. The Germans, as I previously observed, 
have been working the French mines to the utmost — 



248 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

indeed, thej boast that they have installed improved 
machinery in them. They have, furthermore, been im- 
porting ore steadily from Sweden, some of the Swedish 
ore, such as Dannemora, being the best in the world for 
the manufacture of tool steel — so important in muni- 
tion work. 

Diisseldorf, probably the most attractive large manu- 
facturing city in the world, had planned an industrial 
exhibition for 1915 or 1916, and the steel skeletons of 
many of the buildings had already been erected at the 
outbreak of war. But the Germans immediately set to 
work to tear down the steel frames to use them for more 
practical purposes. "We were going to call it a German 
Fair" said a native manufacturer to me early in the 
war; "but we can have it later and call it a World's 
Fair, as the terms will be synonymous." 

Isolated near the Rhine is the immense reconstructed 
Zeppelin shed which British airmen in IlTovember, 
1914, partly destroyed, together with the nearly com- 
pleted Zeppelin within it. The daring exploit evidently 
work up the newly appointed anti-aircraft gunners, for 
they subsequently annihilated two of their own ma- 
chines approaching from the West. 

The badly paid war slaves of Essen are working the 
whole twenty-four hours, seven days a week, in three 
shifts a day of eight hours each, under strict martial 
law. The town is a hotbed of extreme Social Democ- 
racy, and as a rule the Socialists of Westphalia are 
almost as red as those of the manufacturing districts of 
Saxony. But Socialists though they be, they are just 
as anti-British as the rest of Germany, and they like 
to send out their products with the familiar hall-mark 



THE WAR SLAVES OF ESSEN 249 

of "Gott strafe England," or "Best wishes for King 
George." It is the kind of Socialism that wants more 
money, more votes, less work, but has no objection to 
plenty of war. It is a common-sense Socialism, which 
knows that without war Essen might shrink to its pre- 
war dimensions. 

Essen is very jealous of the great Skoda works near 
Pilsen in Austria. My hotel manager spoke with some 
acerbity of the amount of advertising the Austrian siege 
howitzers were receiving. "You can accept my assur- 
ance," he said, "that the guns for the bombardment of 
Dover were made here, and not at the skoda works, as 
the Austrians claim." 

Every German in Essen seems to feel a personal 
pride in the importance of the works to the Empire at 
the fateful hour. The 42-centimetre gun "which con- 
quered Belgium" — as the native puts it — is almost dei- 
fied. Everybody struts about in the consciousness that 
he or she has had directly or indirectly something to do 
with the murderous weapon which has wrought such 
death and glory in Germany's name. "The Empire has 
the men, Essen has the armour-plate, the torpedoes, the 
shells, the guns. It is the combination which must 
win." That is the spirit in Kruppville. 



CHAPTER XXI 

TOMMY IN GERMANY 

ONE day the world will be flooded with some of the 
most dramatic, horrible, and romantic of narra- 
tives — the life-stories of the British soldiers captured 
in the early days of the war, their gross ill-treatment, 
their escapes, and attempts at escape. I claim to be the 
only unofficial neutral with any large amount of eye- 
witness, hand-^to-hand knowledge of those poor men in 
Germany. 

One of the most difficult tasks I assumed during the 
war was the personal and unconducted investigation of 
British prisoners of war. The visitor is only allowed 
to talk with prisoners when visiting camps under the 
supervision of a guide. My tramps on foot all over 
Germany gave me valuable information on this as on 
other matters. 

My task was facilitated by the Germany policy of 
showing the hated British captives to as many people as 
possible ; thus the 30,000 men have been scattered into 
at least 600 prison camps. In the depleted state of 
the German Army it is not easy to find efficient guards 
for so many establishments. Prisoners are constantly 
being moved about. They are conveyed ostentatiously 
and shown at railway stations en route, where until re» 
cently they were allowed to be spat upon by the public, 
and were given coffee into which the public were al- 

250 



TOMMY IN GERMANY 251 

lowed to spit. These are but a few of the slights and 
abominations heaped upon them. Much of it is quite 
unprintable. 

Many a night did I lie awake in Berlin cogitating 
how to get into touch with some of these men. I learned 
something on a previous visit in 1914, when I saw the 
British prisoners at one of the camps. At that time it 
was impossible to get into conversation with them. 
They were efficiently and continually guarded by com- 
paratively active soldiers. 

On this occasion I came across my first British pris- 
oner quite by accident, and, as so often happens in life, 
difficult problems settle themselves automatically. In 
nothing that I write shall I give any indication of the 
whereabouts of the sixty prisoners with whom I con- 
versed privately, but there can be no harm in my men- 
tioning the whereabouts of my public visit, which took 
place in one of the regular neutral "Cook's tours" of 
the prisoners in Germany. 

The strain of my work in so suspicious a place as 
Berlin, the constant care required to guard one's ex- 
pressions, and the anxiety as to whether one was being 
watched or not got on my nerves sometimes, and one 
Sunday I determined to take a day off and go into the 
country with another neutral friend. There, by acci- 
dent, I came across my first private specimen of Tommy 
in Germany. 

We were looking about for a decent Gasthaus in 
which to get something to eat when we saw a notice 
high up in large type on a wall outside an old farm- 
house building, which read: — 



252 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Jeder Yerhehr der ZivilhevdlTcerung mit den 
Kriegsgefangenen ist Stkeng Vekbotejst. 

"Any intercourse of the civil population with the. 
prisoners of war is strictly forbidden." 

These notices, which threaten the civilian population 
with heavy penalties if they exchange any words with 
the prisoners, are familiar all over Germany, but I did 
not expect to find them in that small village. 

My neutral friend thought it would make a nice 
photograph if I would stand under the notice, which I 
did after a cautious survey showed that the coast was 
clear. 

As I did so a Eussian came out of the barn and said, 
in rather bad German, "Going to have your photograph 
taken ?" I replied, in German, "Yes." 

He heard me speaking English to my friend, and 
then, looking up and down the street each way to see if 
we were being watched, he addressed me in English 
with a strong Cockney accent. 

"You speak English, then ?" I said. 

"I am English," he replied. "I'm an English pris- 
oner." 

"Then what are you doing in a Russian uniform ?" 

"It is the only thing I could get when my own clothes 
wore out." Keeping a careful eye up and down the 
street, he told us his story. He was one of the old Ex- 
peditionary Eorce ; was taken at Mons with five bullet 
wounds in him, and, after a series of unpublishable hu- 
miliations, had been drafted from camp to camp until 
he had arrived at this little village, where, in view of 
the German policy of letting all the population see an 



TOMMY IN GERMANY 253 

Englishman, he was the representative of his race in 
that community. "The local M.P." he called himself, 
in his humorous way. 

Robinson Crusoe on his island was not more ignorant 
of the truth about the great world than that man, for, 
while he had learnt a few daily expressions in German, 
he was unable to read it. The only information he 
could gather was from the French, Belgian, and Rus- 
sian prisoners with him, and some he got by bribing one 
of the Landsturm Guards with a little margarine or 
sugar out of his parcel from England. He was full of 
the battle of Mons and how badly he and his comrades 
in Germany felt at the way they had been left unsup- 
ported there. !N'one the less, though alone, with no 
Englishman for miles, living almost entirely on his par- 
cels, absolutely cut off from the real facts of the war, 
hearing little but lies, he was as calmly confident of the 
ultimate victory of the Allies as I am. 

I asked him if he heard from home. 

"Yes," he said, "now and then, but the folks tell me 
nothing and I can tell them nothing. If you get back 
to England you tell the people there not to believe a 
word that comes from English prisoners. Those who 
write favourably do so because they have to. Every 
truthful letter is burned by the military censor. Tell 
the people to arrange the parcels better and see that 
every man gets a parcel at least once a week — ^not send 
five parcels to one man and no parcels to some poor 
bloke like me who is alone. How is the war going on, 
guv'nor ?" he asked. I gave him my views. "I think 
it's going badly for the Germans — not by what they tell 
me here or what I gets in that awful Continental Times 



254 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

paper, but from what I notice in the people round 
about, and the officers who visit us. The people are not 
so abusive to the English as they used to be. The su- 
perior officers do not treat us like dogs, as they did, and 
as for the Landsturmers — well, look at old Heinrich 
here." 

At that moment a heavy, shabby old Landsturm sol- 
dier came round the corner, and the Cockney prisoner 
treated him almost as though he were a performing 
bear. 

"You're all right, ain't you, Heiny, so long as I give 
you a bit of sugar now and then?" he said to his de- 
crepit old guardian in his German gibberish. 

This state of affairs was a revelation to me, but I was 
soon to find that if the British prisoners are weary of 
their captivity their old German guardians are much 
more weary of their task. These high-spirited British 
lads, whom two years of cruelty have not cowed, are an 
intense puzzle to the German authorities. 

"You see," remarked a very decent German official 
connected with the military censorship department, 
"everyone of these Britishers is different. Every one 
of them sticks up for what he calls his 'rights' : many 
of them decline to work on Sunday, and short of taking 
them out on Sunday morning at the point of the bayonet 
we cannot get them to do it. We have to be careful, too, 
with these Englishmen now. As a man of the world, 
you will realise that though our general public here do 
not know that the English have captured many Germans 
lately, and the fact is never mentioned in the commimi- 
ques, we have had a hint from Headquarters that the 
British prisoners may one day balance ours, and that 



TOMMY IN GERMANY 255 

hardship for these verfluchte Engldnder may result in 
hardship for our men in England." 

That incident was long ago. It is important to relate 
that since the beginning of the battle of the Somme 
there is, if I was correctly informed, a marked improve- 
ment in the condition of English prisoners all over Ger- 
many — ^not as regards food supplied by the authorities, 
because the food squeeze naturally affects the prisoners 
as it does their guardians, but in other ways. 

In addition to the British capturing numbers of Ger- 
man hostages on the Somme. to hold against the treat- 
ment of their men in Germany, I think I may claim 
without undue pride that much good work has been 
done by the American Ambassador and his staff of 
attaches, who work as sedulously on behalf of the pris- 
oners as though those prisoners had been American. 

The German authorities hatQ and respect publicity 
and force in matters not to their liking, and Mr. 
Gerard's fearlessness in reports of conditions and urgent 
pleas for improvement have been of great service. All 
the threats and bluster of Germany have failed to cow 
him. 

To continue my narrative of the Cockney soldier in 
Russian uniform. So many Englishmen are in Rus- 
sian uniform, Belgian uniform, French uniform, or a 
mix-up uniform that there is no possibility of my Cock- 
ney Russian being recognised by the authorities, and 
the photograph which my neutral friend took of him 
and me was taken under the very eyes, of his Land- 
sturmer. 

"Heiny," said the Russian Cockney, "is fed up with 
the war. Aren't you, old Heiny ? During the last few 
weeks a fresh call for more men has cleared the district 



256 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

of everything on two legs. We liave had to work four- 
teen hours a day, and I wonder what my mates at home 
would think of 3s. pay for ten days' work ?" 

I was able to comfort him by giving him some cigars, 
and a great deal of really true and good news about the 
war, all of which he repeated to Landsturmer Heinrich. 
I suggested that this might be unwise. "Not a bit of 
it," he said. "Lots of these old Germans are only too 
anxious to hear bad news, because they think that bad 
news will bring the thing to a stop." 

How true that remark was I knew from my minute 
investigations. The incident was closed by the distant 
appearence of a Feldwehel (sergeant-major). My 
Cockney vanished, and Heinrich patrolled onward. 

This particular incident is not typical of the life of a 

British prisoner in Germany, but it is indicative of the 

position many of the 30,000 prisoners have taken up by 

reason of their strong individuality and extraordinary 

cheerfulness and confidence. My impression of them 

is of alert, resourceful men (their escapes have been 

wonderful) — men who never know when they are 

beaten. If Britain has sufficient of these people she 

cannot possibly lose the war. 

***** 

The world does not need reminders such as that of 
Wittenberg or of such singularly accurate narratives as 
several in Blackwood's Magazine to know what has 
happened to British prisoners in Germany. 

It is common knowledge throughout the German 
Empire that the most loathsome tasks of the war in 
connection with every camp or cage are given to the 
British. They have had to clean the latrines of negro 



TOMMY IN GERMANY 257 

prisoners, and were in some cases forced to work witK 
implements which would liiake their task the more 
disgusting. One man told me that his lunch was 
served to him where he was working, and when he 
protested he was told to eat it there, or go without. 

Conversations that I have had here in London 
about prisoners give me the impression that the British 
public does not exactly apprehend what a prisoner 
stands for in German eyes. 

First, he is a hostage. If he be an oflScer his exact 
social value is estimated by the authorities in Berlin, 
who have a complete card index of all their officer 
prisoners, showing to what British families they belong 
and whether they have social or political connections 
in Britain. Thus when someone in England mistakenly, 
and before sufficient German prisoners were in their 
hands, treated certain submarine marauders differently 
from other prisoners, the German Government speedily 
referred to this card-index, picked out a number of 
officers with connections in the Souse of Lords ancf 
House of Commons, and treated them as convicts. 

The other German view of the prisoner is his cash 
value as a labourer. I invite my readers to realise the 
enormous pecuniary worth of the two million prisoner 
slaves now reclaiming swamps, tilling the soil, building 
roads and railways, and working in factories for their 
German taskmastersw 

The most numerous body of prisoners in Germany 
are the Russians. They are to be seen everywhere. In 
some cases they have greater freedom than any other 
prisoners, and often, in isolated cases^ travel unguarded 
by rail or tramway to and from their work. If they are 



258 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

not provided with good Kussian uniforms, in which, 
of course, they would not be able to escape, they are 
made conspicuous by a wide stripe down the trouser 
or on the back. They are easy, docile, physically strong, 
and accustomed to a lower grade of food than any other 
prisoners, except the Serbs. 

The British, of course, are much the smallest num- 
ber in Germany, but much the most highly prized for 
hate propaganda purposes. 

"More difficult to manage," said one Unteroffizier to 
me, "than the whole of the rest of our two million." It 
is, indeed, a fact that the 30,000 British prisoners, 
though the worst treated, are the gayest, most outspoken, 
and rebellious against tyranny of the whole collection. 

There is, howevir, a brighter side to prison life in 
Germany, I am happy to record. A number of really 
excellent camps have been arranged to which neutral 
visitors are taken. When I told the German Foreign 
Office that I would like to see the good side of prison 
life, I was given permission by the Kriegsministerium 
(War Office) to visit the great camp at Soltau with its 
31,000 inmates with Halil Halid Bey (formerly Turk- 
ish Consul in Berlin) and Herr Miiller (interested in 
Germany's Far Eastern developments). 

Five hours away from Berlin, on the monotonous 
Luneberger Heide (Liineberg Heath), has sprung up 
this great town with the speed of a boom mining town 
in Colorado. 

On arrival at the little old town of Soltau we were 
met by a military automobile and driven out on a road 
made by the prisoners to the largest collection of huts 
I have ever seen. 



TOMMY IN GERMANY 259 

There is nothing wrong that I could detect in the 
camp, and I should say that the 200 British prisoners 
there are as well treated as any in Germany. The Com- 
mandant seems to be a good fellow. His task of ruling 
so great an assemblage of men is a large and difficult 
one, rendered the easier by the good spirit engendered 
by his tact and kindness. 

I had confirmation of my own views of him later, 
when I came across a Belgian who had escaped from 
Germany, and who had been in this camp. He said : — 
"The little captain at Soltau was a good fellow, and if 
I am with the force that releases the prisoners there 
after we get into Germany, I will do my best to see that 
he gets extra good treatment." 

Our inspection occupied six hours. Halil Halid 
Bey, who talks English perfectly, and looks like an 
Irishman, was taken for an American by the prisoners. 
In fact, one Belgian, believing him to be an American 
official, rushed up to him and with arms outstretched 
pleaded: "Do you save poor Belgians, too, as well as 
British ?" 

The physical comfort of the prisoners is well looked 
after in the neat and perfectly clean dormitories. The 
men were packed rather closely, I thought, but not more 
than on board ship. 

^ One became almost dazed in passing through these 
miles of huts, arranged in blocks like the streets of an 
American town. 

We visited the hospital, which was as good as many 
civilian hospitals in other countries. There I heard 
the first complaint, from a little red-headed Irishman, 
his voice wheezing with asthma, whose grievance was 



26o THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

not against the camp itself, but against a medical or- 
der which had reversed what he called his promise to 
be sent to Switzerland. He raised his voice without 
any fear, as our little group, accompanied by the Com- 
mandant and the interpreter, went round, and I was 
allowed to speak to him freely. I am not a medical 
man, but I should think his was a case for release. His 
lungs were obviously in a bad state. 

We were also accompanied by an English sergeant, 
one Saxton — a magnificent type of the old Army, so 
many of whom are eating out their days in Germany. 
He spoke freely and frankly about the arrangements, 
and had no complaint to make except the food shortage 
and the quality of the food. 

The British section reminded one now and then of 
England. Portraits of wives, children, and sweethearts 
were over the beds ; there was no lack of footballs, and 
the British and Belgians play football practically every 
day after the daily work of reclaiming the land, erect- 
ing new huts, making new roads, and looking after the 
farms and market gardens has been accomplished. 

An attempt has been made to raise certain kinds of 
live stock, such as pigs, poultry, and Belgian hares — a' 
large kind of rabbit. There were a few pet dogs about 
— one had been trained by a Belgian to perform tricks 
equal to any of those displayed at variety theatres. 

Apparently there is no lack of amusement. I visited 
the cinematograph theatre, and the operator asked, 
"What would you like to see — something funny ?" He 
showed us a rather familiar old film. The reels are 
those that have been passed out of service of the Ger- 
man moving picture shows. In the large theatre, which 



TOMMY IN GERMANY 261 

would hold, I should think, seven hundred to a thou- 
sand people, there was a good acrobatic act and the 
performing dog, to which I have referred, with an or- 
chestra of twenty-five instruments, almost all prisoners, 
but a couple of German Landsturmers helped out. The 
guarding of the prisoners is effected bj plenty of 
barbed wire and a comparatively small number of old- 
ish Landsturmers. 

A special cruelty of the Germans towards prisoners 
is the provision of a lying newspaper in French for 
the Frenchmen, called the Gazette des Ardennes. The 
Gazette des Ardennes publishes every imaginable kind 
of lie about the French and French Army, with garbled 
quotations from English newspapers, and particularly 
The Times, calculated to disturb the relations of the 
French and English prisoners in Germany. For the 
British there is a paper in English which is quite as 
bad, to which I have already referred, called the Con- 
tinental Times, doled out three times a week. The 
Continental Times is, I regret to say, largely written by 
renegade Englishmen in Berlin employed by the Ger- 
man Government, notably Aubrey Stanhope, who for 
well-known reasons was unable to enter England at the 
outbreak of war, and so remains and must remain in 
Germany, where, for a very humble pittance, he con- 
ducts this campaign against his own country. 

For the Russians a special prevaricating sheet, called 
the RussM Visnik, is issued. All these newspapers pre- 
tend to print the ofiicial French, British, and Russian 
. communiques. 

For a long time the effect on the British prisoners 
was bad, but little by little events revealed to them that 



2 62 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

the Continental Times, which makes a specialty of at- 
tacks on the English Press, was anti-British. 

The arrival of letters and parcels is, of course, the 
great event for the prisoners and, so far as the large 
camps are concerned, I do not think that there are now 
any British prisoners unprovided with parcels. It is 
the isolated and scattered men, moved often from place 
to place for exhibition purposes, who miss parcels. 

Soltau, although a model camp, is bleak and dreary 
and isolated. At the outset cases of typhus occurred 
there, and in a neat, secluded corner of the camp long 
lines of wooden crosses tell the tale of sadness. The 
first cross marked a Pussian from far-away Vilna, the 
next a Tommy from London. East had met West in 
the bleak and silent graveyard on the heather. Close to 
them slept a soldier from some obscure village in Nor- 
mandy, and beside him lay a Belgian, whose life had 
been the penalty of his country's determination to de- 
fend her neutrality. Here in the heart of Germany the 
Allies were united even in death. 

As I made the long journey back to Berlin I re- 
flected with some content on the good things I had seen 
at Soltau, and I felt convinced that the men in charge 
of the camp do everything within their power to make 
the life of the prisoners happy. But as the train 
pounded along in the darkness I seemed to see a face 
before me which I could not banish. It was the face 
of a Belgian, kneeling at the altar in the Catholic 
chapel, his eyes riveted on his Saviour on the Cross, his 
whole being tense in fervent supplication, his lips quiv- 
ering in prayer. My companions had gone, but I was 
held spellbound, feeling "How long! How long!" was 



TOMMY IN GERMANY 263 

the anguish of his mind. He must have been a man 

who had a home and loved it, and his v^^hole expression 

told unmistakably that he was imploring for strength 

to hold out till the end in that dreary, cheerless region 

of brown and grey. 

His captors had given him a chapel, to be sure, but 

why was he in Germany at all ? 

* * * * * 

Soltau and other camps are satisfactory — but there 
are others, many others, such as unvisited punishment 
camps. The average Britisher in confinement in Ger- 
many is under the care of an oldish guard, such as 
Heiny of the Landsturm, but the immediate authority 
is often a man of the notorious Unteroffizier type, whose 
cruelty to the German private is well known, and whose 
treatment of the most hated enemy can be imagined. 

The petty forms of tyranny meted out to German 
soldiers such as making a man walk for hours up and 
down stairs in order to fill a bath with a wineglass ; 
making him shine and soil then again shine and soil 
hour after hour a pair of boots ; making him chew and 
swallow his own socks have been described in suppressed 
German books. 

I believe that publicity, rigorous blockade and big 
shells are the only arguments that have any effect on the 
Prussians at present. It is publicity and the fear of 
opinion of certain neutrals that has produced such 
camps as Soltau. It is difficult for the comfortable 
sit-at-homes to visualise the condition of men who have 
been in the enemy atmosphere of hate for a long period. 
All the British soldiers whom I met in Germany were 
captured in the early part of the war when their shell- 



264 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

less Army had to face macliine-guns and high explosives 
often with the shield of their own breasts and a rifle. 

Herded like cattle many of the wounded dying, they 
travelled eastwards to be subject to the insults and vili- 
fications of the German population. That they should 
retain their cheery confidence in surroundings and 
among a people so ferociously hostile so entirely un- 
British, so devoid of chivalry or sporting instinct, is a 
monument to the character of their race. 



CHAPTER XXII 

HOW THE PRUSSIAN GTJAED CAME HOME FEOM 
THE SOMME 

EAELY in August, 1916, I was in Berlin. The Brit- 
ish and French offensive had commenced on July 
1st. Outwardly it appeared to attract very little no- 
tice on the part of Germany and I do not believe that 
it attracted sufficient attention even in the highest mili- 
tary quarters. It was considered to be Great Britain's 
final "bluff." The great maps in the shop windows in 
every street and on the walls in every German house 
showed no change, and still show no change worth no- 
ticing. "Maps speak," say the Germans. 

One hot evening in Berlin I met a young officer whom 
I had known on a previous visit to Germany, and who 
was home on ten days' furlough. I noticed that he was 
ill or out of sorts, and he told me that he had been un- 
expectedly called back to his regiment on the Western 
front. "How is that?" I said. He made that curious 
and indescribable German gesture which shows discon- 
tent and dissatisfaction. "These English are put- 
ting every man they have got into a final and ridiculous 
attempt to make us listen to peace terms. My leave 
is cut short, and I am off this evening." We had a glass 
of beer at the Bavaria Eestaurant in the Friedrich- 
strasse. 

"You have been in England, haven't you?" he in- 

26s 



266 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

quired. I told him that I had been there last year. 
"They seem to have more soldiers than we thought," he 
said. "They seem to be learning the business ; my bat- 
talion has suffered terribly." 

Within the next day or two there were other rumours 
in Berlin — rumours quite unknown to the mass. How 
and where I heard these rumours it would be unfair 
to certain Germans, who were extremely kind to me, 
to say, but it was suggested to me by a friend — a mem- 
ber of the Extreme Left of the Social Democratic Party 
— ^that if I wanted to learn the truth I should go out to 
Potsdam and see the arrival of the wounded men of the 
famous Prussian Guard, who had, he said, had a ter- 
rible experience at the hands of the English at Contal- 
maison on July 10th. 

He drew me aside in the Tiergarten and told me, for 
he is, I am sure, a real German patriot, that the state 
of things in the Somme, if known throughout Germany, 
would effectively destroy the pretensions of the annexa- 
tionist party, who believed that Germany has won the 
war and will hold Belgium and the conquered portion 
of France and Poland. 

He told me to go out to Potsdam with caution, and 
he warned me that I should have the utmost difficulty 
in getting anywhere near the military sidings of the 
railway station there. 

I asked another usually extremely well-informed 
friend if there was anything particular happening in 
the war, and told him that I thought of going to Pots- 
dam, and he said, "What for? There is nothing to be 
seen there — ^the same old drilling drilling, drilling." 
So well are secrets kept in Germany. 



HOW PRUSSIAN GUARD CAME HOME 267 

The 4tli of August is the anniversary of what is 
known in Germany as "England's treachery" — the day 
that Britain entered the war in what the German Gov- 
ernment tells the people is "a base and cowardly at- 
tempt to try and beat her by starving innocent women 
and children." 

On that sunny and fresh morning I looked out of the 
railway carriage window some quarter of a mile before 
we arrived at Potsdam and saw numerous brown trains 
marked with the Red Cross, trains that usually travel 
by night in Germany. 

There were a couple of officers of the Guard Cavalry 
in the same carriage with me. They also looked out. 
'^Ach, noch 'maV ("What, again?") discontentedly re- 
marked the elder. They were a gloomy pair and they 
had reason to be. The German public has begun to 
know a great deal about the wounded. They do not yet 
know all the facts, because wounded men are, as far as 
possible, hidden in Germany and never sent to Socialist 
centres unless it is absolutely unavoidable. The official 
figures which are increasing in an enormous ratio since 
the development of Britain's war machine, are falsified 
by manipulation. 

And if easy proof be needed of the truth of my as- 
sertion I point to the monstrous official misstatement 
involved in the announcement that over ninety per cent, 
of German wounded return to the firing line ! Of the 
great crush of wounded at Potsdam I doubt whether 
any appreciable portion of the serious cases will return 
to anything except permanent invalidism.. They are 
suffering from shell wounds, not shrapnel, for the most 
part, I gathered. 



268 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

As our train emptied it was obvious that some great 
spectacle was in progress. The exit to the station be- 
came blocked with staring peasant women returning 
from the early market in Berlin, their high fruit and 
vegetable baskets empty on their backs. When I 
eventually got through the crowd into the outer air and 
paused at the top of the short flight of steps I beheld a 
scene that will never pass from my memory. Filmed 
and circulated in Germany it would evoke inconceivable 
astonishment to this deluded nation and would swell the 
malcontents, already a formidable mass, into a united 
and dangerous army of angry, eye-opened dupes. This 
is not the mere expression of a neutral view, but is also 
the opinion of a sober and patriotic German states- 
man. 

I saw the British wounded arrive from E'euve Cha- 
pelle at Boulogne; I saw the Eussian wounded in the 
retreat from the Bukovina ; I saw the Belgian wounded 
in the Antwerp retreat, and the German wounded in 
East Prussia, but the wounded of the Prussian Guard 
at Potsdam surpassed in sadness anything I have wit- 
nessed in the last two bloody years. 

The British I^euve Chapelle wounded were, if not 
gay, many of them blithe and smiling — ^their bodies 
were hurt but their minds were cheerful; but the 
wounded of the Prussian Guard — the proudest military 
force in the world — who had come back to their home 
town decimated and humbled — these Guards formed 
the most amazing agglomeration of broken men I have 
ever encountered. As to the numbers of them, of these 
five Reserve regiments but few are believed to be un- 
hurt. Vast numbers were killed, and most of the rest 



HOW PRUSSIAN GUARD CAME HOME 269 

are back at Potsdam in the ever growing streets of hos- 
pitals that are being built on the Bornstadterfeld. 

One of the trains had just stopped. The square was 
blocked with vehicles of every description. I was sur- 
prised to find the great German furniture vans, which 
by comparison with those used in England and the 
United States look almost like houses on wheels, were 
drawn up in rows with military precision. As if these 
were not enough, the whole of the wheeled traffic of 
Potsdam seemed to be commandeered by the military 
for the lightly wounded — cabs, tradesmen's wagons, pri- 
vate carriages — everything on wheels except, of course, 
motor-cars, which are non-existent owing to the 
rubber shortage. Endless tiers of stretchers lay 
along the low embankment sloping up to the line. 
Doctors, nurses, and bearers were waiting in quiet 
readiness. 

The passengers coming out of the station, including 
the women with the tall baskets, stopped, but only for 
a moment. They did not tarry, for the police, of which 
there will never be any dearth if the war lasts thirty 
years, motioned them on, a slight movement of the hand 
being sufficient. 

I was so absorbed that I failed to notice the big con- 
stable near me until he laid his heavy paw upon my 
shoulder and told me to move on. A schoolmaster and 
his wife, his Rucksack full of lunch, who had taken ad- 
vantage of the glorious sunshine to get away from Ber- 
lin to spend a day amidst the woods along the Havel, 
asked the policeman what the matter was. 

The reply was "NicJits hier zu sehen" ("Nothing to 



270 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

be seen here. Get along!"). The great "Hush! Hush! 
Hush!" machinery of Germany was at work. 

Determined not to be baffled, I moved out of the 
square into the shelter of a roadside tree, on the prin- 
ciple that a distant view would be better than none at 
all, but the police were on the alert, and a police lieu- 
tenant tackled me at once. I decided to act on the 
German military theory that attack is the best defence, 
and, stepping up to him, I stated that I was a news- 
paper correspondent. "Might I not see the wounded 
taken from the train ?" I requested. He very cour- 
teously replied that I might not, unless I had a special 
pass for that purpose from the Kriegsministerium in 
Berlin. 

I hit upon a plan. 

I regretfully sighed that I would go back to Berlin 
and get a pass, and retracing my steps to the station I 
bought a ticket. 

A soldier and an TJnterofBzier were stationed near the 
box in which stood the uniformed woman who punches 
tickets. 

The TJnteroffizier looked at me sharply. "N"© train 
for an hour and a half," he said. 

"That doesn't disturb me in the least when I have 
plenty to read," I answered pleasantly, at the same time 
pointing to the bundle of morning papers which I car- 
ried, the NorddeutscJie Allgemeine Zeitung of the For- 
eign Office, on the outside. 

I knew Potsdam thoroughly, and was perfectly fa- 
miliar with every foot of the station. I knew that there 
was a large window in the first and second-class dining- 



HOW PRUSSIAN GUARD CAME HOME 271 

room which was even closer to the ambulances in the 
square than were the exit steps. 

I did not go directly to the dining-room, but sat on 
one of the high-backed benches on the platform and be- 
gan to read the papers. The Unteroffizier looked out 
and found me fairly buried in them. He returned a 
little later and saw me asleep — or thought he did. 

When he had gone I sauntered along the platform 
into the dining-room, to find it vacant save for a youth- 
ful waiter and a barmaid. I walked straight to the 
window — ^where the light would be better for reading — 
and ordered bread and Edam cheese, tearing off a fifty 
gram amount from my Berlin bread ticket, which was 
fortunately good in Potsdam. 

My position enabled me to look right out upon the 
square below, but rendered me inconspicuous from the 
street. 

By this time the wounded were being moved from 
the train. The slightly wounded were drawn up in 
double ranks, their clean white arm- and head-bandages 
gleaming in the noonday light. They stood dazed and 
dejected, looking on at the real work which was just 
beginning — the removal of the severely wounded. 

Then it was that I learned the use of those mam- 
moth furniture vans. Then it was, I realised that these 
vans are part of Germany's plans by which her wounded 
are carried — I will not say secretly, but as unob- 
trusively as possible. In some of the mammoths were 
put twelve, into others fourteen; others held as many 
as twenty. 

The Prussian Guard had come home. The steel 
corps of the army of Germany had met near Oontal- 



272 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

maison the light-hearted boys I had seen drilling in 
Hyde Park last year, and in a furious counter-attack, 
in which they had attempted to regain the village, had 
been wiped out. 

These were not merely wounded, but dejected 
wounded. The whole atmosphere of the scene was that 
of intense surprise and depression. Tradition going 
back to Frederick the Great, nearly two hundred years 
ago, had been smashed^by amateur soldiers. The cal- 
low youth of sixteen who served my lunch was mutter- 
ing something to the barmaid, who replied that he was 
lucky to be in a class that was not likely to be called up 
yet. 

The extreme cases were carried at a snail's pace by 
bearers, who put their feet down as carefully as if they 
were testing very thin ice, and who placed the com- 
fortable spring stretchers in the very few vehicles which 
had rubber or imitation rubber tyres. The work was 
done with military precision and great celerity. The 
evacuation of this train was no sooner finished than an- 
other took its place, and the same scene was repeated. 
Presently the great furniture vans returned from hav- 
ing deposited their terrible loads, and were again filled. 
One van was reserved for those who had expired on the 
journey, and it was full. 

This, then, was the battered remnant of the five Re- 
serve regiments of the Prussian Guard which had 
charged the British lines at Contal maison three weeks 
before in a desperate German counter-attack to wrest 
the village from the enemy, who had just occupied it. 
Each train discharged between six and seven hundred 



HOW PRUSSIAN GUARD CAME HOME 273 

maimed passengers. I^or was this the last day of the 
influx. 

The Guard had its garrisons chiefly in Potsdam, but 
also partly in Berlin, and represents the physical flower 
of German manhood. On parade it was inspiring to 
look at, and no military officer in the world ever 
doubted its prowess. ISTor has it failed in the war to 
show splendid courage and fighting qualities. English 
people simply do not understand its prestige at home 
and among neutrals. 

The Guard is sent only where there is supreme work 
to be done. If you hear that it has been hurled into a 
charge you may rest assured that it is striving to gain 
something on which Germany sets the highest price — 
for the life-blood of the Guard is the dearest that she 
can pay. 

In the battle of the Marne the active regiments of 
the Guard forming a link between the armies of von 
Billow and von Hansen were dashed like spray on 
jagged cliffs when "they surged in wave after wave 
against the army of Foch at Sezanne and Fere Cham- 
penoise. 

Germany was willing to sacrifice those superb troops 
during the early part of the battle because she knew 
that von Kluck had only to hold his army together, even 
though he did not advance, and the overthrow of FocK 
would mean a Teuton wedge driven between Verdun 
and Paris. 

One year and ten months later she hurled the Guard 
Reserve at Contalmaison because she was determined 
that this important link in the chain of concrete and 
steel that coiled back and forth before Bapaume-Pe- 



274 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

ronne must remain unbroken. The newly-formed lines 
of Britain's sons bent but did not break under the 
shock. They were outnumbered, but, like all the rest 
of the British that the back-from-the-front German sol- 
diers have told me about, these fought on and on, never 
thinking of surrender. 

I know from one of these that in a first onslaught 
the Guard lost heavily, but was reinforced and again 
advanced. Another desperate encounter and the men 
from Potsdam withered in the hand-to-hand carnage. 
The Germans could not hold what they had won back, 
and the khaki succeeded the field grey at Contalmaison. 

The evacuation of the wounded occupied hours. I 
purposely missed my train, for I knew that I was prob- 
ably the only foreign civilian to see the historic picture 
of the proudest soldiery of Prussia return to its gar- 
rison town from the greatest battle in history. 

Empty trains were pulled out of the way, to be 
succeeded by more trains full of wounded, and again 
more. Doctors and nurses were attentive and always 
busy, and the stretcher-bearers moved back and forth 
imtil their faces grew red with exertion. 

But it was the visages of the men on the stretchers 
that riveted my attention. I never saw so many men 
so completely exhausted. Kot one pair of lips relaxed 
into a smile, and not an eye lit up with the glad recog- 
nition of former surroundings. 

It was not, however, the lines of suffering in those 
faces that impressed me, but that uncanny sameness 
of expression, an expression of hopeless gloom so deep 
that it made me forget that the sun was shining from 
an unclouded sky. The dejection of the police, of the 



HOW PRUSSIAN GUARD CAME HOME 275 

soldier onlookers, of the walking wounded, and those 
upturned faces on the white pillows told as plainly as 
words could ever tell that the Guard had at last met a 
force superior to themselves and their war machine. 
Thej knew well that they were the idol of their Father- 
land, and that they had fought with every ounce of their 
great physical strength, backed by their long traditions. 
They had been vanquished by an army of mere sports- 
men. 

My thoughts went back to Berlin and the uninformed 
scoflBngs at the British Army and its futile efforts to 
push back the troops of Rupprecht on the Somme. Yet 
here on the actual outskirts of the German capital was 
a grim tribute to the machine that Great Britain had 
built up under the protection of her Il^avy. 

In Berlin at that moment the afternoon editions were 
fluttering their daily headlines of victory to the crowds 
on the Linden and the Eriedrichstrasse, but here the 
mammoth vans were moving slowly through the streets 
of Potsdam. 

To the women who stood in the long lines waiting 
with the potato and butter tickets for food on the other 
side of the old stone bridge that spans the Havel they 
were merely ordinary cumbersome furniture wagons. 

How were they to know that these tumbrils contained 
the bloody story of Contalmaison ? 



CHAPTEE XXIII 

HOW GEEMANY DEKIES 

GERMANY, according to Eeiehstag statements, is 
spending millions of pounds upon German propa- 
ganda throughout the universe. The trend of that pro- 
paganda is: — 

1. To attempt to convince the neutral world that 
Germany cannot be beaten; and 

2. Above all, to convince Great Britain (the chief 
enemy) that Germany cannot be beaten. 

The only factors really feared by the Germans of 
the governing class are the Western front and the 
blockade. 

I went into Germany determined to try to find out 
the truth, and to tell the truth. I had an added incen- 
tive to be thorough and work on original lines, since I 
was fortunate enough to secure possession of an official 
letter which advised those whom it concerned to give no 
information of value to Americans in general. I also 
got accurate information that the Wilhelmstrasse had 
singled me out as one American in particular to whom 
nothing of value was to be imparted. 

The German, with his cast-in-a-mould mind, does 
not understand the trait developed among other peoples 
of seeing things for themselves. He is unacquainted 
with originality in human beings. He thinks a corre- 

276 



HOW GERMANY DENIES 277 

spondent does not observe anything unless it is pointed 
out to him. 

Last summer, for example, one could learn in the 
Wilhelmstrasse that the potato crop was a glittering 
success. By walking through the country and pulling 
up an occasional plant, also talking to the farmers, I 
concluded that it was a dismal failure, which conclu- 
sion I announced in one of the first newspaper articles 
I wrote after I had left Germany. Recent reports from 
that country show that I was right, which increases my 
conviction that the confidential tips given by Germany's 
professional experts, who instruct neutral visitors, do 
very well to make Germany's position seem better than 
it actually is, but they seldom stand the acid test of 
history. 

Seeking to invent excuses is not peculiar to the Ger- 
mans, but it is more prevalent among them than among 
any other people that I know. In this one respect the 
German Government is a Government of the people. 
Some of the diplomatic explanations which have ema- 
nated from Berlin during the war have been weird in 
their absurdity and an insult to the intelligence of those 
to whom they were addressed. 

President Wilson did not accept the oflScial lie con- 
cerning the sinking of the 'Arabic, in view of the posi- 
tive proof against Germany, and Germany backed 
down. President Wilson did not accept the official lie 
concerning the sinking of the Sussex. Incomprehensible 
as it is to the Teutonic mind, he attached greater weight 
to the first-hand evidence of reliable eye-witnesses, plus 
fragments of the torpedo which struck the vessel, than 
to the sacred words of the German Foreign Office, 



278 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

which had the impertinence to base its case on a sketch, 
or alleged sketch, hastily made bj a U-boat manipulator 
whose artistic temperament should have led him to 
Munich rather than to Kiel. The crime and the lie 
were so glaring that Germany once more backed down. 

Germany lied about the Dutch liner Tubantia. As 
in the case of the Sussex^ the evidence of the fragments 
of torpedo was so incontrovertible that Berlin had to 
admit that a German torpedo sank the Tubantia. In- 
deed, one fragment contained the number of the tor- 
pedo. During my travels in the Fatherland at that 
time I found no doubt in the minds of those with whom 
I discussed the matter that a German submarine sank 
the vessel, though many were of the opinion that it was 
a mistake. 

The Wilhelmstrasse is tenacious, however, and we 
awoke one morning to read what was probably its most 
remarkable excuse. To be sure, a German torpedo sank 
the Tubantia, but it was not fired by the Germans. The 
expert accountant who was in charge of the U-boat 
learned upon consulting his books that he fired that 
torpedo on March 6. It did not strike the Tubantid 
until March 16. So that it had either been floating 
about aimlessly and had encountered the liner, or per- 
haps the cunning British had corraled it and made use 
of it. At any rate, Berlin disclaimed all responsibility 
for its acts subsequent to the day it parted company 
vdth the German submarine. 

The path of the torpedo, however, had been observed 
from the bridge of the Tubantia. 

I remarked to one of my well-informed confidants 
among the Social Democratic politicians that although 



HOW GERMANY DENIES 279 

it is perfectly true that a rolling stone gathers no moss, 
it is equally true that a moving torpedo leaves no 
wake. 

"Yes," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "our For- 
eign Office is well aware of that. Have you not noticed 
the significance of the two dates, March 6, when the 
torpedo is said to have been fired, and March 16, when 
it struck ? Do you not see that our diplomats have still 
one more loop-hole in case they are pressed ? Is it not 
clear that they could find a way out of their absurd 
explanation by shifting the responsibility to the man 
or the men who jotted down the date and transferred 
it ? The question in my mind is : Who lost the 1 from 
the 16 ?" 

Be that as it may, little Holland, enraged at the 
wanton destruction of one of her largest vessels, was 
not in a position to enforce her demands. Therefore 
Germany did not back down — that is, not publicly. 

My description of the return of the Prussian Guard 
to Potsdam naturally aroused the wrath of a Govern- 
ment which strives incessantly to hide SO much from its 
own people and the outside world. 

Directly the article reached Germany the Govern- 
ment flashed a wireless to America that no members of 
the Potsdam Guard returned to Potsdam from Contal- 
maison. This is a typical German denial trick. I 
never mentioned the Potsdam Guard. 

I had referred to the Prussian Guard. 

If any reader of this chapter cares to look into the 
files of English newspapers at the time of the Contal- 
maison battle, for such it was, they will find confirma- 
tion of my statements as to the presence of the Prus- 



28o THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

sian Guard in the Englisli despatches published in the 
second week in July. 

The Contalmaison article has in whole or in part 
been circulated in the United States, and also in the 
South- American Republics, and probably in other neu- 
tral countries. This has now called forth a semi-official 
detailed denial, which I print herewith. 

It is signed by the Head Staff Doctor at Potsdam, 
one Greronne, by name. He divides his contradiction 
into ten clauses. Each of the first nine contains an 
absolute untruth. 

The last is a mere comment on a well-known German 
statesman, who told me that as I was seeking the truth 
in Germany I had better go and find it at Potsdam. 

I wish to deal with the denials one by one, as each 
is a revelation of German psychology. 

1. The hospital train. This says "Hospital 
which reached Potsdam on train" (singular). I de- 
August 4, and was there scribed hospital trains 
unloaded, brought wound- (plural). It may be true 
ed men from various troop that one train did not con- 
divisions. There were no tain any Prussian Guards. 
Prussian Guards among I did not happen to see 
them. that train. All the trains 

that I saw unloaded Prus- 
sian Guard Reserves. 

2. !N"o wounded man is I have never said that 
kept concealed in Ger- any wounded man was 
many. All are consigned kept concealed in Ger- 
to public hospitals or laz- many. I have pointed out 
arets, where they may at that the whole system of 
any time be visited by the German placing of the 
their relatives and friends, wounded is to hide from 



HOW GERMANY DENIES 



281 



3. Hospital trains travel 
by day as well as by night, 
and, in accordance with 
instructions, are unloaded 
only in the daytime. In 
case they reach their des- 
tination during the night, 
the regulations provide 
that they are to wait until 
the following morning be- 
fore unloading. 

4. In order that the 
loading or unloading of 
the vehicles which trans- 
port the wounded to the 
lazarets may proceed as 
rapidly as possible, it is 
necessary to keep the sur- 
roundings of the train 
clear. The wounded must 
also be spared all annoy- 
ance and curiosity on the 
part of the public. 



5. Dead men have 
never been unloaded from 
the lazaret trains at Pots- 
dam — t herefore there 
could have been none on 



the German population, 
and especially in Social 
Democrat districts, the ex- 
tent of their wounded. 

This is absolutely un- 
true. The number of 
wounded arriving at the 
depots in Germany is now 
so great that the trains are 
obliged to be unloaded 
whenever they arrive, by 
day or by night. I have 
witnessed both. 



The whole of this para- 
graph is a transparent dis- 
tortion of fact. What hap- 
pens at Potsdam and what 
happens everywhere else 
is that a cordon of police 
surrounds the scene and 
drives the public by force 
in the usual Prussian way, 
if necessary, from the 
scene. I described the 
method by which I wit- 
nessed what was going on 
at the railway station from 
the railway station re- 
freshment room itself. 

I saw the dead men re- 
moved. 



282 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 



August 4, 1916. The prin- 
ciple of transporting the 
wounded is based upon the 
ability of the wounded to 
bear transportation. All 
those who suffer during 
the journey are removed 
to a hospital at the fron- 
tier. 

6. The furniture vans 
used for transporting 
wounded to the hospitals 
at Potsdam and other 
cities have proved a great 
success. These vans, more- 
over, all bear the sign of 
the Red Cross, and may 
easily be recognised as 
hospital vehicles. 



7. That men who are 
seriously wounded should 
give one an impression of 
weariness goes without 
saying. Lightly wounded 
men who travel from the 
Somme to Boulogne may 
make a better appearance 
than the seriously wound- 
ed who have made the long 
journey from the West 
front to Potsdam. 



A transparent untruth 
on the face of it. If only 
one train came into Pots- 
dam why use furniture 
vans at all? The furni- 
ture vans are used for pur- 
poses of concealment, and 
because the very large am- 
bulance supply always on 
duty at the great military 
hospitals at Potsdam was 
unequal to the task. I saw 
no Red Cross indications. 

My statement is that all 
the German wounded at 
the present stage of the 
war, lightly or otherwise, 
compare badly with the 
English and French 
wounded, whom I have 
seen. They are utterly 
war weary and suffering 
not so much froioi shell 
shock as from surprise 
shock, the revelation of the 
creation of a British 
Army that had never oc- 
curred to the German sol- 
diers. 



HOW GERMANY DENIES 



283 



8. As to the great 
"Hush ! hush ! machinery" 
— what is one to call the 
attempt to keep the truth 
from neutrals by closing 
English harbours near the 
Channel to neutral ship- 
ping for whole days at a 
time — during which the 
English ship-transports of 
wounded proceed to Eng- 
land? 

9. The figures pub- 
lished by the Ministry of 
War concerning the num- 
bers of men disUiissed 
from lazarets (hospitals) 
are based upon unques- 
tionable statistics. These 
statistics remain as given 
— despite all the asper- 
sions of our enemies. 



I have made inquiries 
of British officials, and 
they tell me that it is abso- 
lutely untrue that the 
channel is closed to neu- 
tral shipping when the 
English hospital trans- 
ports proceed to England. 
This untruth is on a par 
with the others. 



An interesting revela- 
tion as to Ger^nan casualty 
lists. It is stated by this 
head medical officer of 
Potsdam that these lists 
are drawn up from the 
men dismissed from laz- 
arets (hospitals), that is 
to say, this doctor admits 
that the custom is now to 
keep back the casualty 
lists until the man is dis- 
charged, whereas your 
British lists, I am in- 
formed on authority, are 
published as speedily as 
possible after the soldier is 
wounded. The whole of 
the German wounded now 
in hospitals have not yet, 
therefore, been included 
in casualty lists — the cas- 
ualties which are forcing 
the Germans to employ 
every kind of labour they 



284 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 



10. It would prove in- 
teresting to learn the name 
of the "patriotic German 
Statesman," who is said to 
cherish the same opinions 
as this writer in the Daily 
Mail. 



can enslave or enroll from 
Belgium, Poland, Prance, 
and now from their own 
people from sixteen up to 
sixty years of age of both 
sexes. 

Por obvious reasons I 
decline to subject my 
friend to the certain pun- 
ishment that would follow 
disclosure of his name. 



I regret to burden readers with a chapter so personal 
to myself, but I think that anyone who studies these 
German denials with the preceding chapter on the Con- 
talmaison wounded will learn at least as much about 
the German mind as he would by studying the famous 
British White paper of August, 1914. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Germany's human eesoukces 

THREE factors are of chief importance in estimating 
German man-power. First, the number of men of 
military age; second, the number of these that are in- 
dispensable in civil life; third, the number of casual- 
ties. Concerning the last two there are great differences 
of opinion among military critics in Allied and neu- 
tral countries. As regards the first there need be little 
difference, although I confess surprise at the number 
of people I have met who believe the grotesque myth 
that Germany has systematically concealed her increase 
in population, and that instead of being a nation of 
less than seventy millions she has really more than one 
hundred millions. 

It is safe to say that at the outbreak of war Germany 
was a nation of 68,000,000, of whom 33,500,000 were 
males. Of these nearly 14,000,000 were between 18 
and 45 ; 350,000 men over 45 are also with the Colours. 
The boys who were then 16 and lY can now be added, 
giving us a grand total of some 15,000,000. 

Normally Germany employed men of between 18 and 
45 as follows: — Mines, 600,000; metals, 800,000; 
transport, 650,000; agriculture, 3,000,000; clothing, 
food preparation, 1,000,000, making a total of 6,- 
050,000. 

Up to this point there can be little difference of 

285 



286 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

opinion. Trom this point on, however, I must, like 
others who deal with the subject, make estimates upon 
data obtained. During my last visit to Germany I 
systematically employed a rough check on the figures 
derived through the usual channels. Concentrated ef- 
fort to obtain first-hand information in city, village, and 
countryside, north, east, south, and west, "with eyes 
and ears open, and vocal organs constantly used for 
purposes of interrogation, naturally yielded consider- 
able data when carried over a period of ten months. 
The changes from my last visit and from peace time 
were also duly observed as were the differences between 
Germany and the other nations I had visited during 
the war. Walking, of which I did a colossal amount, 
was most instructive, because it afforded me an oppor- 
tunity to study conditions in the villages. Discreet 
questioning gave me accurate statistics in hundreds of 
these that I visited, and of many more hundreds that 
I asked about from people whom I met on my travels. 
For example, in Oberammergau, which had at the be- 
ginning of the war 1,900 inhabitants, about 350 had 
been called to the Colours when I was there, and of 
these thirty-nine had been killed. 

My investigations in the Fatherland convinced me 
that of the 3,000,000 men between 18 and 45 formerly 
engaged in agriculture, considerably fewer than 100,- 
000 continue to be thus occupied. This work is done 
by prisoners and women. Mine and metal work have 
kept from 60 to 70 per cent, of their men of military 
age; but transport, already cut somewhat, lost 25 per 
cent, of the remainder when Hindenburg assumed su- 
preme command, which would reduce 650,000 to about 



GERMANY'S HUMAN RESOURCES 287 

300,000. More than 90 per cent, of those engaged in 
the preparation of food and the making of clothing have 
been called up. Thus of the 6,050,000 engaged in the 
occupations given above, about 1,750,000 remain, 
which means that more than 4,000,000 have been called 
to the Colours. 

From building and allied trades at least 90 per cent, 
are in military uniform. Assuming that some 2,000,- 
000 men of military age are included in indispensable 
engineers, fishermen, chemists, physically unfit, and so 
forth, we conclude on this basis that Germany can en- 
rol in her Army and ISTavy more than 11,000,000 men. 

We may approach the subject from a somewhat dif- 
ferent angle by considering what percentage of her 
total population Germany could call to the Colours un- 
der stress — and she is to-day under stress. Savage 
tribes have been known to put one-fifth under arms. 
An industrial State such as Germany cannot go to this 
extreme. Yet by using every means within her power 
she makes a very close approach to it. In practically 
every village of which I secured figures in Saxony, Ba- 
varia, Posen, East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania, 
Mecklenburg, and Oldenburg, a fifth or nearly a fifth 
have been called up. In some Silesian and Rhenish- 
Westphalian districts, however, not more than from a 
seventh to a tenth. If we allow for all Germany a lit- 
tle less than one-sixth, we get 11,000,000. 

What are the factors which enable Germany to call 
this number or a little more than this number to the 
Colours? First, the organisation of the women. I 
have seen them even in the forges of Rhineland doing 
the work of strong men. "The finest women in the 



2 8 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

world, these Ehinelanders," as one manager put it. 
"Just look at that one lift that weight. Few men could 
do better." And his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. 

Second, and of tremendous importance, are the huge 
numbers of prisoners in Germany, and her sensible de- 
termination to make them work. She has taken about 
one and two-third millions on the field of battle. There 
also happen to be in Germany nearly a million other 
prisoners, buried alive, whose existence has apparently 
escaped the notice of the outside world. These are the 
Russian civilians who were caught in the German trap 
when it snapped suddenly tight in the summer of 1914. 
Before the war 2,000,000 Russians used to go to Ger- 
many at harvest time. The war began at harvest time. 
The number of these men, which from my own first- 
hand investigations in the remote country districts I 
estimate at nearly a million, would have escaped my 
notice also, had I not Avalked across Germany. 

Another important factor in the labour problem in 
Germany is the employment of the Poles. l!Tot only 
are they employed on the land, but great colonies of 
them have grown up in Diisseldorf and other industrial 
centres. I saw an order instructing the military com- 
mandants throughout Germany to warn the Poles, 
whose discontent with the food conditions in Germany 
made them desire to return home, that conditions in 
Poland were much worse. This, then, is an official 
German admission that there is starvation in Poland, 
for m^uch worse could mean nothing else. Germany is 
keeping Poland a sealed book, although I admit that 
she occasionally takes tourists to see the German-fos- 
tered university at Warsaw. Just before I left Ger- 



GERMANY'S HUMAN RESOURCES 289 

many still another order was issued for the regulation 
of neutral correspondents. Under no circumstances 
were thej to be allowed to talk with the natives in Po- 
land. From unimpeachable authority I learned that 
the Poles were intensely discouraged at the thorough- 
ness with which the Prussians stripped the country af- 
ter the last harvest, and that in some sections the people 
are actually dying of hunger. Even in Warsaw, the 
death-rate in some neighbourhoods has increased from 
700 to 800 per cent. I was witness to German rage 
when Viscount Grey stipulated that food could be sent 
there only if the natives were allowed to have the prod- 
uce of their own land. Prussia wanted that produce, 
and she got it. 

I mention these supplies here because the Poles who 
worked to produce them must be included in German 
labour estimates just as much as though they had been 
working in Germany. 

Germany also adds to her man-power by utilising 
her wounded so far as possible. Her efforts in this 
direction are praiseworthy, since they not only con- 
tribute to the welfare of the State, but benefit the in- 
dividual. I have seen soldiers with one leg gone, or 
parts of both legs gone, doing a full day's work mend- 
ing uniforms. The blind are taught typewriting, which 
enables them to earn an independent living in Govern- 
ment employ. In short, work is found for everybody 
who can do anything at all. 

In a previous chapter I have spoken of the organisa- 
tion of the children, a factor which should not be left 

out of consideration. 

***** 



290 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Having considered the assets, let us turn to the debits. 

The German casualty lists to the end of 1916 total 
4,010,160, of which 909,665 have been killed or died 
of wounds. My investigations in Germany lead me to 
put the German killed or died of wounds at 1,200,000, 
and the total casualties at close to 5,000,000. If we 
assume that 50 per cent, of all wounded return to the 
front and another 25 per cent, to service in the interior, 
we must also consider in computation of man-power 
that the casualty lists do not include the vast num- 
bers of invalided and the sick, which almost balance 
those that return to the front. This means, in short, 
that the net losses are nearly as great at any one time 
as the gross losses. Consequently, according to my es- 
timates there must be at least 4,500,000 Germans out 
of action at this moment. 

In a war of attrition it is the number of men def- 
initely out of action which counts, for the German lines 
can be successfully broken, and only successfully 
broken, when there are not enough men to hold them. 
The Germans now have in the West probably about 130 
divisions. 

Hindenburg's levies in the late summer were so enor- 
mous that I am convinced from what I saw in Germany 
that she has now called almost everything possible to 
the Colours. One of Hindenburg's stipulations in tak- 
ing command was that he should always have a force 
of half a million to throw wherever he wished. We 
have seen the result in Rumania, and the men skimmed 
from the training units then have been replaced by this 
last great levy from civilian life. 

Therefore, with something over 11,000,000 men 



GERMANY'S HUMAN RESOURCES 291 

called up, Germany has now 6,000,000, or a little more 
all told, many of whom are not at all suited for service 
at the front. 

Germany on the defensive at the Somme certainly 
lost at least 600,000 men. Attrition, to be sure, works 
both ways, but if the Germans are out-gunned this year 
in the West to the extent expected their position must 
become untenable. The deadly work of reducing Ger- 
man man-power continues even though the Allied line 
does not advance. I know of a section of the German 
front opposite the French last winter which for five 
months did not have an action of sufficient importance 
to be mentioned by either side in the official reports, yet 
the Germans lost 10 per cent, of their effectives in 
killed. 

The more munitions the Allies make Germany use, 
the more fat she must use for this purpose, and the less 
she will have for the civil population, with a conse- 
quent diminution of their output of work. Germany 
simply cannot burn the candle at both ends, 



CHAPTEK XXV 

Berlin's east-eis^d 

THE poor of Berlin live in the north and east of the 
city. I have seen Berlin's East-end change from 
the hilarious joy of the first year of the war to an 
ever-deepening gloom. I have studied conditions there 
long and carefully, but I feel that I can do no better 
than describe my last Saturday in that interesting quar- 
ter of the German capital. 

Late in the morning I left the Stettiner Bahnhof in 
the north and walked eastward through the Invaliden- 
strasse. There was practically no meat in the butchers' 
shops, just the customary lines of empty hooks. A long 
queue farther on attracted my attention and I crossed 
the street to see what the people were waiting for. A 
glance at the dark red carcases in the shop told me that 
this was horse-meat day for that district. 

The number of vacant shops of all descriptions was 
increasing. The small shoemaker and tailor were clos- 
ing up. The centralisation of food distribution is 
greater here than in the better-class districts, with the 
result that many small shopkeepers have been driven 
out of business. In parts of Lothringerstrasse a quar- 
ter of the shops were vacant, in other parts one-half. 
The bakers' shops are nearly empty except at morning 
and evening. In fact, after my long sojourn in block- 
aded Germany I still find myself after two months in 

2gz 



BERLIN'S EAST-END 293 

England staring in amazement at the well-stocked shop 
windows of every description. 

Shortly before noon I reached the Zentral Viehund- 
Schlachthof (the slaughter-houses). Through a great 
gateway poured women and children, each carrying 
some sort of a tin or dish full of stew. Some of the 
children were scarcely beyond the age of babyhood, and 
their faces showed unmistakable traces of toil. The 
poor little things drudged hard enough in peace 
time, and in war they are merely part of the big 
machine. 

The diminishing supply of cattle and pigs for kill- 
ing has afforded an opportunity to convert a section 
of the slaughter-houses into one of the great People's 
Kitchens. Few eat there, however. Just before noon 
and at noon the people come in thousands for the 
stew, which costs forty pfennigs (about 5d.) a quart, 
and a quart is supposed to be enough for a meal and a 
half. 

I have been in the great Schlachthof kitchen, where 
I have eaten the stew, and I have nothing but praise 
for the work being done. This kitchen, like the others 
I have visited, is the last word in neatness. The labour- 
saving devices, such as electric potato-parers, are of the 
most modern type. In fact, the war is increasing the 
demand for labour-saving machinery in Germany to at 
least as great an extent as high wages have caused such 
a demand in America. Among the women who prepare 
the food and wait upon the people there is a noticeable 
spirit of co-operation and a pride in the part they are 
playing to help the Fatherland durchhalten (hold out). 
Should any of the stew remain unsold it is taken by a 



294 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

well-known restaurant in the Potsdamer Platz, which 
has a contract with the municipal authorities. Little 
was wasted in Germany before the war; nothing, abso- 
lutely nothing, is wasted to-day. 
, As at the central slaughter-house, so in other districts 
the poor are served in thousands with standard stew. 
The immense Alexander Market has been cleared of 
its booths and tables and serves more than 30,000 
people. One director of this work told me that the 
Berlin authorities would supply nearly 400,000 people 
before the end of the winter. 

The occasional soldier met in the streets looked shab- 
bier in the shabby surroundings of the East. The Ger- 
man uniform, which once evoked unstinted praise, is 
suffering sadly to-day owing to lack of raw materials. 
I was in a Social Democratic district, but the men in 
uniform who were home on leave were probably "good" 
Social Democrats, since it is notorious that the regular 
variety are denied this privilege. 

The faces of the soldiers were like the rest of the 
faces I saw that day. There was not the least trace 
of the cheerful, confident expression of the days when 
all believed that the Kaiser's armies would hammer 
their way to an early peace — "in three months," as 
people used to say during the first year and a quarter of 
the war. Verdun had been promised them as a certain 
key to early peace, and Admiral Scheer was deified as 
the immortal who tore loose the British clutch from the 
German throat. But Verdun and Jutland faded in 
succeeding months before the terrible first-hand evi- 
dence that the constant diminution of food made life a 
struggle day after day and week after week. The news 



BERLIN'S EAST-END 295 

from Rumania, though good, would bring them no cheer 
until it was followed bj plenty of food. 

In the vicinity of the Schlesischer Bahnhof occurred 
a trifling incident which gave me an opportunity to see 
the inside of a poor German home that day. A soldier 
in faded field-grey, home on leave, asked me for a 
match. During the conversation which followed I said 
that I was an American, but to my surprise he did not 
make the usual German reply that the war would have 
been ended long ago if it had not been for American 
ammunition. On the contrary, he showed an interest 
in my country, as he had a brother there, and finally 
asked me if I would step into his home and explain a 
few things to him with the aid of a map. 

Though I was in a district of poverty the room I 
entered was commendably clean. An old picture of 
William I. hung on one wall; opposite was Bismarck. 
Over the low door was an unframed portrait of "unser 
Kaiser," while Hindenburg completed the collection. 
Wooden hearts, on which were printed the names Liege, 
Maubeuge, and Antwerp, recalled the days when Ger- 
man hearts were light and German tongues were full 
of brag. 

A girl of ten entered the room. She hated the war 
because she had to rush every day at noon from school 
to the People's Kitchen to fetch the family stew. In 
the afternoon she had to look after the younger chil- 
dren while her mother stood in the long lines before 
the shops where food was sold. The family were grow- 
ing tired of stew day after day. They missed the good 
German sausage and unlimited amount of bread and 
butter. 



296 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

The mother looked in on her way to the street, bas- 
ket under arm. She was tired, and was dulled by the 
daily routine of trying to get food> She talked bitterly 
about the war, but though she blamed the Agrarians for 
not doing their part to relieve the food situation, she 
expressed no animosity against her own Government. 
The father had been through Lodz in Hindenburg's two 
frontal assaults on Warsaw, where he had seen the 
slopes covered with forests of crosses marking the Ger- 
man dead, and his words were bitter, too, wheji he 
talked of his lost comrades. And then, the depressing 
feeling of returning from an army pursuing the mirage 
of victory to find his family and every other family 
struggling in the meshes of that terrible and relentless 
blockade ! 

It never had occurred to him that his Government 
might be in the least responsible for the misery of his 
country. Like the great bulk of the German people he 
is firmly convinced that the Fatherland has been fight- 
ing a war of defence from the very beginning. "To 
think that one nation, England, is responsible for all 
this suffering!" was the way that he put it. He is a 
"good" Social Democrat. 

When I once more resumed my walk I saw the lines 
of people waiting for food in every street. Each time 
I turned a corner great black masses dominated the 
scene. I paused at a line of more than three hundred 
waiting for potatoes. Ten yards away not a sound 
could be heard. The very silence added to the depres- 
sion. With faces anxious and drawn they stood four 
abreast, and moved with the orderliness of soldiers. 
[Not a sign of disturbance, and not a policeman in sight. 



BERLIN'S EAST-END 297 

Some women were mending socks; a few, standing on 
the edge of the closely packed column, pushed baby car- 
riages as they crawled hour after hour toward the nar- 
row entrance of the shop. 

Every line was like the rest. The absence of police- 
men is particularly noteworthy, since they had to be 
present in the early days — a year ago — ^when the butter 
lines came into being. Drastic measures were taken 
when the impatient women rioted. Those days are over. 
The Government has taught the people a lesson. They 
will wait hour after hour, docile and obedient hence- 
forth, if necessary until they drop — make no mistake 
of that. 

But the authorities also learned a lesson. "People 
think most of revolution when they are hungry," was 
what one leader said to me. On this Saturday of which 
I write not a potato was to be bought in the West-end 
of Berlin, where the better classes live. Berlin had 
been without potatoes for nearly a week. To-day they 
had arrived, and the first to come were sent to the East- 
end. In the West-end the people are filled with more 
unquestioning praise of everything the Government 
does ; they applaud when their Kaiser confers an Order 
upon their Crown Prince for something, not quite clear, 
which he is supposed to have accomplished at Verdun. 
Therefore they can wait for potatoes until the more 
critical East-end is supplied. 

I went farther eastward through the Kottbuser dis- 
trict to the Kottbuser Ufer on the canal, along which 
a couple of hundred people waited in an orderly calumn 
without any guardian — another evidence of the success 
of the drastic measures of July and early August, when 



298 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

the demonstrations against the war were nipped in the 
bud. These people were waiting for the free advertise- 
ment sheets from the gaudily painted yellow Ullstein 
newspaper building across the square. They had to 
stand by the side of the canal because a queue of sev- 
eral hundred people waiting for potatoes wound slowly 
before Ullstein's to the underground potato-shop next 
door. 

I had not heard a laugh or seen anybody smile all 
day, and when darkness fell on the weary city I went to 
a cheap little beer-room where several "bad," but really 
harmless, Social Democrats used to gather. Among 
them was the inevitable one who had been to America, 
and I had become acquainted with them through him. 
They talked in the new strain of their type, that they 
might as well be under the British or French as under 
their own Government. 

Their voices were low — a rare event where Germans 
gather at table. They did not plot, they merely 
grumbled incessantly. The end of the war had def- 
initely sunk below their horizon, and peace, not merely 
steps to peace, was what they longed for. There was 
the customary cursing of the Agrarians and the expres- 
sions of resolve to have a new order of freedom after 
the war, expressions which I believe will not be real- 
ised unless Germany is compelled to accept peace by 
superior forces from without. 

I left the dreary room for the dreary streets, and 
turned towards the centre and West-end of Berlin, 
where the cafe lights were bright and tinkling music 
made restricted menu-cards easier to bear. 

Suddenly the oppressive feeling of the East-end was 



BERLIN'S EAST-END 299 

dispelled by the strains of military music drawing 
closer in a street near by. I hurried towards it, and 
saw a band marching at the head of two companies of 
wounded soldiers, their bandages showing white under 
the bright street lights of Berlin. 

The men were returning to their hospital off the 
Prenzlauer AUee from a day's outing on the River 
Spree. Scores of followers swelled to hundreds. The 
troubles of the day were forgotten. Eyes brightened 
as the throng kept step with the martial music. A roll 
of drum, a flare of brass, and the crowd, scattered voices 
at first, and then swelling in a grand crescendo, sang 
'Deutschland iiber Alles. To-morrow they would com- 
plain again of food shortage and sigh for peace, but to- 
night they would dream of victory. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW 

A LITTLE, bent old woman, neat, shrivelled, with 
clear, healthy eje and keen intelligence, was col- 
lecting acorns in the park outside the great Schloss, the 
residence of von Oppen, a relative of the Police Presi- 
dent of Berlin. 

I had walked long and was ahout to eat my picnic 
lunch, and stopped and spoke with her. We soon came 
to the one topic in Germany — ^the war. She was eighty- 
four years of age, she told me, and she worked for 
twelve hours a day. Her mother had seen l^apoleon 
pass through the red-roofed village hard by. She well 
remembered what she called "the Bismarck wars." She 
was of the old generation, for she spoke of the Kaiser 
as "the King." 

"'No," she said, "this war is not going like the Bis- 
marck wars — ^not like the three that happened in 1864, 
1866, 1870, within seven years when I was a young 
woman." She was referring, of course, to Denmark, 
Austria, and France. "We have lost many in our vil- 
lage- — food is hard to get." Here she pointed to the two 
thin slices of black bread which were to form her mid- 
day meal. She did not grumble at her twelve hours' 
day in the fields, which were in addition to the work 
of her little house, but she wished that she could have 
half an hour in which to read history. 

300 



IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW 301 

Her belief was that the war would be terminated by 
the Zeppelins. "When our humane King really gives 
the word, the English ships and towns will all be de- 
stroyed by our Zeppelins. He is holding back his great 
secret of destruction out of kindness." 

The remark of that simple, but intelligent old woman 
as to the restraint imposed by the Kaiser upon the Zep- 
pelins constituted the universal belief of all Germany 
until the British doggedly built up an air service under 
the stress of necessity, which has brilliantly checked the 
aerial carnival of frightfulness. People in Great 
Britain seem to have no conception of the great part 
the Zeppelins were to play in the war, according to 
German imagination. That simple old peasant lady 
expressed the views that had been uttered to me by in- 
telligent members of the Beichstag — ^bankers, mer- 
chants, men and women of all degrees. The first de- 
struction of Zeppelins — that by Lieutenant Warneford, 
and the bringing down of L Z77 at Revigny, did not 
produce much disappointment. The war was going 
well in other directions. But the further destruction 
of Zeppelins has had almost as much to do with the de- 
sire for peace, in the popular mind, as the discomfort 
and illness caused by food shortage and the perpetual 
hammerings by the French and British Armies in the 
West. 

It should be realised that the Zeppelin has been a 
fetish of the Germans for the last ten years. The 
Kaiser started the worship by publicly kissing Count 
Zeppelin, and fervently exclaiming that he was the 
greatest man of the century. Thousands of pictures 
have been imagined of Zeppelins dropping bombs on 



3 02 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Buckingham Palace, the Bank of England, and the 
Grand Fleet. For a long time, owing to the hiding of 
the facts in England of the Zeppelin raids, even high 
German officials believed that immense damage had 
been done. The French acted more wisely. They al- 
lowed full descriptions of the aeroplane and Zeppelin 
raids in France to be published, and the result was dis- 
couraging to the Germans. I remember studying the 
British Zeppelin communiques with Germans. At that 
time the London Authorities were constantly referring 
to these raids taking place in the "Eastern counties," 
when the returned Germans knew exactly where they 
had been. The result was great encouragement. Il^oth- 
ing did more to depress the Germans than the humorous 
and true accounts of the Zeppelin raids which were 
eventually allowed to appear in the English newspapers. 

The Germans have now facts as to the actual dam- 
age done in England. They know that the British pub- 
lic receive the Zeppelins with excellent aircraft and 
gun-fire. They know that anti-aircraft preparations 
are likely to increase rather than decrease, and while, 
for the sake of saving the nation's "face," it will be 
necessary that Zeppelins be further used, the people 
who are directing the war know that, so far as land 
warfare is concerned, they are not a factor. 

There have been more mishaps than have been pub- 
lished ; more wounded and damaged Zeppelins than the 
Germans have ever announced. I was informed that 
the overhauling and repair of many Zeppelins after a 
successful or unsuccessful raid was a matter, not of 
days, but of weeks. There was great difficulty in ob- 
taining crews. Most of them are sailors, as are the 



IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW 303 

officers. There have been suppressed mutinies in con- 
nection with the manning of the Zeppelins. 

Count Zeppelin, who, up to a year ago, was a na- 
tional hero, is already regarded by a large section of 
the population as a failure. The very house servants 
who subscribed their pfennigs and marks in the early 
days to help conduct his experiments now no longer 
speak of him with respect. They have transferred their 
admiration to Hindenburg and the submarines. 

The majority of Germans of all classes believe what 
they are officially instructed to believe, no more, no 
less. The overmastering self-hypnotism which leads 
the present-day German to believe that black is white, 
if it adds to his self-satisfaction, is one of the most 
startling phenomena of history. But what of Ballin, 
Heineken, von Gwinner, Gutmann, Thyssen, Rathenau, 
and other captains of industry and finance ? Some of 
them have expressed opinions in interviews, but what 
do they really think ? I am not going to indulge in 
any guesswork on this matter. I am simply going to 
disclose some important statements made at a secret 
meeting attended by many of the business directors of 
the German Empire. The meeting was for the pur- 
pose of discussing actual conditions in a straightfor- 
ward manner, therefore no member of the Press, Ger- 
man or foreign, was present. 

In striking contrast with custom when the war is 
discussed, nothing was said of Kultur, of German in- 
nocence or enemy guilt, of an early and victorious 
peace, of British warships hiding always in safety, or 
of the omniscience and infallibility of the Supreme 
Military Command. 



304 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

The little circle of Germans who have displayed such 
brilliant organising ability in commerce and industry 
are practical men, who look at the war and the days to 
follow the war in the cold light of debit and credit. 
This being the case, the honest opinions expressed by 
Arthur von Gwinner, President of the Deutsche Bank, 
are worthy of serious consideration. His chief points 
were : — , 

1. The belief cherished by the mass of the nation 
that a Central Europe Economic Alliance will amply 
compensate us for any shortcomings elsewhere, and en- 
able us to sit back and snap our fingers at the rest of the 
world is too absurd to be entertained by serious men. 
Our trade, import and export, with Austria-Hungary 
was as great as it could be for many years to come, and 
it was only a small part of our total trade. After the 
war, as before, the bulk of our trade must be with coun- 
tries now neutral or enemy, and we must seriously con- 
sider how to hold and add to this trade in the future. 

2. The solution of the labour problem will be vital 
in the work of reconstruction. We must make every 
provision in order to forge rapidly ahead immediately 
after the close of the war. 

No German, except for necessary reasons of State, 
should he allowed to leave the country for a number of 
years after the war. 

3. Before the war 2,000,000 Eussians came to us 
every year at harvest time. These must continue to 
come. 

4. We have done wonderful work in scientific agri- 
culture, but the limit of productivity of the soil has 
undoubtedly been reached. 



IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW 305 

5. Do not place too much hope in an early war be- 
tween the United States and Japan. 

6. There is great rejoicing over the sinking of enemy 
ships. It should also be remembered, however, that 
we are not paying any dividends at present. 

In the discussion which followed the statements of 
Herr von Gwinner and from various channels of re- 
liable information which I made use of in Germany, 
I found a serious view taken of these and other topics, 
of which the great body of Germans are quite un- 
aware. 

Take the labour problem, for example. For years 
Germany has recognised the necessity of a rapid in- 
crease of population, if a nation is to smash rivals in 
industry and war. IsTot for a moment during this 
struggle has Germany lost sight of this fact. Many 
times have I heard in the Fatherland that the assurance 
of milk to children is not entirely for sentimental but 
also for practical reasons. Official attempts are being 
made at present to increase the population in ways 
which cannot be discussed in this book. "You get your- 
self born and the State does all the rest" was an ac- 
curate analysis of Germany before the war; but the 
State looks after everything now. 

When men go home on leave from the army, mar- 
ried or single, they are instructed in their duty of dcing 
their part to increase the population so that Germany 
will have plenty of colonists for the Balkans, Turkey 
and Asia in the great economic development of those 
regions. To impress this they argue that Germany 
and France had nearly the same number of inhabitants 
in 1870. "See the difference to-day," says the German. 



3o6 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

"This difference is one of the chief causes of our greatly 
superior strength." 

Working girls in Dresden have not only been en- 
couraged but quietly advised to serve the State "by en- 
abling Deutsehland to achieve the high place in the 
vporld which God marked out for it, which can only be 
done if there are a sufficient number of Germans to 
make their influence felt in the world." They have 
been told not to worry, that the State will provide for 
the offspring. In fact, societies of godfathers and god- 
mothers are growing all over Germany. They do not 
necessarily have to bring up the child in their own 
home ; they can pay for its maintenance. Thus the rich 
woman who does not care to have many children her- 
self is made to feel in ultra-scientific Germany that she 
should help her poorer sister. 

The Germans treat the matter very lightly. In 
Bremen, for example, where the quartering of Land- 
stiirmers (the oldest Germans called to military service) 
aniong the people resulted in a large batch of illegiti- 
mate children, I found it the custom, even in mixed so- 
ciety of the higher circles, to refer to them jokingly as 
"young Landstiirmers." 

A serious consideration of what Germany, or any 
other belligerent, will do after the war is usually of 
little value, as conditions after the war depend upon 
what is done during the war. The amount of freedom 
which the German people attain in the next few years 
is in direct proportion to the amount of thrashing ad- 
ministered to their country by the Allies. Perhaps 
they will have something to say about the frontier regu- 



IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW 307 

lations of Germany; but assuming that the training of 
centuries will prevent their hastily casting aside their 
docility, it is extremely probable that few, if any, Ger- 
mans will be allowed to leave Germany during the first 
years of reconstruction. 

This will disappoint several million Germans. De- 
spite the snarling rage displayed everywhere in the 
Fatherland, except in diplomatic circles, against the 
United States, I heard an ever-increasing number of 
malcontents declare that, immediately after the close 
of war, they would go to the States to escape the bur- 
den of taxation. One hears two words — Friede (peace) 
and Essen (food) — constantly. The third word I 
should add is Steuern (taxes). It is all very well to 
sit by some neutral fireside reading Goethe or Schopen- 
hauer, while listening to the Meistersinger von Niirn- 
herg, or the "Melody in F," and lull yourself into the 
belief that the Germans are a race of idealists. This 
touch is used to a considerable extent in German propa- 
ganda. Any one familiar, however, with conditions in 
modern Germany knows that Germans are ultra-ma- 
terialistic. 

I have heard them talk of the cost of the war from 
the very beginning. They gloated over the sweeping 
indemnities they would exact. After they realised the 
possibilities of State-organised scientific burglary in 
Belgium they were beside themselves in joyful antici- 
pation of what Paris, London, and a score of other 
cities would yield. When the war became a temporary 
stalemate, I heard it said, particularly by army officers, 
that Germany was taking no chances with the future, 
but was exacting indemnities now from the occupied 



3o8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

districts. When taxes rose and food shortage increased, 
the possibility that the Germans themselves would have 
to pay some of their own costs of the war in various 
forms of taxation determined a rapidly growing num- 
ber to seeek a way out by emigrating at the first op- 
portunity. 

As Herr Ballin said, "The world will find us as 
strongly organised for peace as we were organised for 
war." The labour problem, however, not only now, 
but for the days of reconstruction, is viewed very seri- 
ously, how seriously may be gathered from the fact that 
there is so much apprehension that Russia may refuse 
to allow her workers to go to Germany for some years 
after the war, that nearly everyone at the secret con- 
ference mentioned above was in favour of making con- 
cessions at the peace conference, should Russia insist. 
Indeed one Rhinelander was of the opinion that it 
would be worth while giving up Courland to get an un- 
limited supply of labour. 

In the meantime the Germans have not been idle in 
other directions. Until Hindenburg called up his im- 
mense levies in the late summer, Germany exported 
steel building materials and coal to contiguous neutral 
countries, but she can no longer do this. Nevertheless, 
she did make elaborate preparations to "dump" into 
Russia on a colossal scale immediately after the resump- 
tion of intercourse. Immense supplies of farming im- 
plements and other articles of steel have been stored in 
the Rhineland, Westphalia, and Silesia, ready for im- 
mediate shipment to Russia, thus enabling Germany 
to get ahead of all rivals in this field. 

Germans also derive comfort from the fact that their 



IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW 309 

ships will be ready at once to carry cargoes and pas- 
sengers, while so many of those of the Allies will be 
used for the transport of troops after the close of the 
war, and must then refit. 

With such plans for "getting the jump" on com- 
petitors it is only natural that I saw more and more ir- 
ritability on the part of the financial men with each 
month of the war after last April. 

Von Gwinner's remark about the improbability of 
war between Japan and the United States in the near 
future would, if known to the German people, cause 
still another keen disappointment, since one of their 
solaces has been the thought that they would soon have 
an opportunity of reaping a munition harvest them- 
selves. 

When Germany tried to make a separate peace with 
Eussia, Japan was also approached — how far, I do not 
know. The Wilhelmstrasse still maintains a Japanese 
department, and any possible thread, however light, 
which may be twisted from a Tokyo newspaper to 
show that perhaps Japan may be won over, is pounced 
upon most eagerly. Germany, Japan, and Russia was 
the combination whispered in Berlin at the time of the 
unsuccessful attempt to separate the Allies. 

Absolute governments have certain advantages in 
war. They have also disadvantages. When things are 
not running smoothly in Germany the Germans worry 
more than do the English when things are not going 
well in England. When the German leaders began to 
disagree as to the best methods to conduct the war, the 
effect upon the people was demoralising. Only their 
gullibility saved them from complete dismay. 



3 lo THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Month after month the great struggle raged, under 
the surface for the most part, but occasionally boiling 
over. Would it be to the best interests of Germany to 
go the limit with the submarines or not ? I^ot once did 
I hear the subject discussed on ethical grounds. Some 
remarks made to me by Doctor Stresemann, one of the 
powerful National Liberals behind the mammoth indus- 
trial trust in Germany, and the most violent apostle 
of f rightfulness in the Reichstag, aptly express the sen- 
timent in favour of unrestricted submarine warfare. 
He and the rest of the men behind Tirpitz had fought 
and lost in the three Committee Assemblies called to 
discuss U-boat policy in 1916. 

As the day set for the September meeting of the 
Reichstag approached I noticed that Herr Stresemann 
was growing more and more excited. "This war is 
lasting too long," he declared to me in great agitation, 
"The Kaiser's most glaring fault is that of trying to 
fight Great Britain with one foot in the grave of chiv- 
alry. If the Chancellor continues to sway him, we will 
wreck the Chancellor at all costs. The only way to win 
this war is to publish again, and this time enforce, the 
decree of February 4th, 1915, warning all neutrals to 
keep out of the submarine zone." 

"But, according to the "Sussex Ultimatum,' that will 
cause a break with the United States," I said. 

"We cannot let that deter us," he declared. "Britain 
is the keystone of our enemies. If she falls they all 
fall. We must attack her where she is vulnerable. We 
TYiust starve her out. As for America, we have little to 
fear from her. In the first place, although she may 
break bff diplomatic relations, she will not enter the 



IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW 311 

war if we are careful not to sink her ships. As Ameri- 
can ships play a small part in the carrying trade to 
England, we can thus refrain from sinking them — 
although we naturally should not proclaim this. 

"In the second place, if America does declare war 
upon Germany, it would have little effect. The war 
will be over before she can organise after the manner of 
Great Britain. Herr Helfferich (former Minister of 
Finance and now Vive-Chancellor) feels that we 
should do everything possible to keep America out, inas- 
much as thereby we shall be in a better position to con- 
clude commercial treaties after the war. Herr Helffe- 
rich exerted powerful influence in the meeting at Great 
Headquarters at the time of the Sussex Crisis. But 
our duty to ourselves is to win the war. If we starve 
out England we win, no matter how many enemies we 
have. If we fail, another enemy, even the United 
States, would not make our defeat more thorough. We 
are justified, for our existence is at stake. The only 
way we can escape defeat is by a successful TJ-boat war 
against England. That would change defeat into over- 
whelming victory. I am absolutely confident; that is 
why the slow methods of the Chancellor make me so 
angry. It will take at least half a year to bring Eng- 
land to her knees, and with our increased privations he 
may wait too long. But we shall compel him ; we shall 
compel him." 

Herr Stresemann later requested me not to publish 
these statements — at least, not until a decision had been 
reached. I did, however, lay the matter before the 
American Embassy in London as soon as I arrived in 
England, since my investigations in Germany left no 



3 1 2 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

doubt in mj mind that she would play two great cards 
— one, to work for peace through negotiation ; the other, 
the last desperate recourse to the submarine. 

As I write (January 21st, 1917) I am convinced 
that it is only a question of time until Germany is 
reduced to this last desperate resort. The men who will 
decide that time will be Hindenburg and Batocki. The 
successful siege of Germany is a stupendous though not 
impossible task. 

On the other hand, the human system is a very 
elastic piece of mechanism, and modern man, far from 
being the degenerate which some admirers of cave-man 
hardihood have pictured him, is able to undergo a 
tremendous amount of privation. Besieged cities have 
nearly always held out longer than the besiegers ex- 
pected. In the besieged city the civilian population 
is for the most part a drag on the military, but in be- 
sieged Germany the civilian population, reinforced by 
slave labour from Belgium, France and Poland, con- 
tinues working at high pressure in order to enable the 
military to keep the field. Fat is the vital factor. The 
more munitions Germany heaps up the more fat she 
must use for this purpose, and the less she will have for 
the civil population, with a consequent diminution of 
their output of work. Germany simply cannot burn 
the candle at both ends. It is my personal opinion that 
Verdun marks the supreme culmination of German 
military offensive in the West, and the West is the 
decisive theatre of war. If that is Hindenburg's 
opinion, then he realises that another colossal German 
offensive in the West would not bring a victorious 
peace. There remains only the alternative of building 



IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW 313 

up a defensive against the coming Allied attacks — an 
alternative depending for its success upon isufScient 
food for the mass of the people. Thus the U-boat de- 
cision clearly rests upon the Chief of Staff and the Food 
Dictator, since their advice to the Imperial Chancellor 
and the All Highest War Lord must be determinative. 

When the day comes for Germany to proclaim to the 
world that she will sink at sight all ships going to and 
from the ports of her enemies, that day will be one of 
the great moments of history. Germany's last card will 
be on the table. It will be war to'^'the knife. Either 
she will starve Great Britain or Great Britain will 
starve her. 

These are problems for the leaders, who have the 
further task of keeping the population hopeful on an 
alarmingly decreasing diet. Superficially, or until you 
want something to eat, or a ride in a taxicab, Berlin 
at night is gay. But you somehow feel that the gaiety 
is forced. London at first sight is appallingly gloomy 
is the evening, and foreigners hardly care to leave 
their hotels. But I find that behind the gloom and the 
darkness there is plenty of spontaneous merriment at 
the theatres and other places of entertainment. There 
is plenty of food, little peace talk, and quiet confidence. 

Across the !N"orth Sea, however, great efforts are 
made by the German Government to keep up the spirits 
of the people. !N"o public entertainer need go to the 
war at all, and the opera is carried on exactly as in 
peace time, though I confess that my material soul 
found it difficult to enjoy Tristan on a long and mono- 
tonous diet of sardines, potato/cs, pheese a(nd fresh- 
water fish — chiefly pike and carp. A humorous 



3 H THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

American friend used to laugh at the situation — the 
brilliantly dressed house, officers ^n their extremely 
handsome grey uniforms, ladies, some of them with 
too many diamonds, and — ^very little to eat. 

At the slightest military gain the bells of victory peal 
wildly, and gay flags colour mile after mile of city 
streets, flags under which weary, silent women crawl 
in long lines to the shops where food is sold. A bewil- 
dering spectacle is this crawling through victory after 
victory ever nearer to defeat. 

Early in the war a ISTorwegian packer, who had not 
had much demand for his sardines in Germany, put 
the picture of Hindenburg on the tins and christened 
them the "Hindenburg Sardines." When he changed 
the trade-mark the Germans bought them as fast as he 
could supply them — ^not because they were short of food 
at that time, but through the magic of a name. To-day 
all that is changed. I^orwegians no longer have to flat- 
ter the Germans, who are anxious to buy anything in 
the way of food. They flood Germany now with im- 
punity with sardines whose merits are extolled in the 
hated English language, sardines which had originally 
been intended for Britain or America, but which are 
now eagerly snapped up at four and five times the peace 
price by people who invariably bid one another good- 
bye with "Gott strafe England." I saw the gem of the 
collection in a Friedrichstrasse window. It was en- 
titled: "Our Allies Brand," on a bright label which 
displayed the flags of Great Britain, France, Russia, 
Italy, Belgium and Japan. 

In Germany you feel that the drama of the battle- 
field has changed to the drama of the larder. Hope and 



IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW 315 

despair succeed one another in the determination to 
hold out economically while soldier and sailor convince 
the world that Germany cannot be beaten. People 
laugh at the blockade, sneer at the blockade and curse 
the blockade in the same breath. A headline of victory, 
a mention of the army, the army they love, and they 
boast again. Then a place in the food line, or a seat at 
table, and they whine at the long war and rage against 
"British treachery." Like a cork tossing on the waves 
— such is the spirit of Germany. 

The majority struggle on in the distorted belief that 
Germany was forced to defend herself from attack 
planned by Great Britain, while the minority are kept 
in check by armed patrols and "preventive arrest." 

The spirit of "all for the Patherland" is yielding to 
the spirit of self-preservation of the individual. Every- 
where one sees evidence of this. The cry of a little girl 
running out of a meat shop in Friedenau, an excellent 
quarter of Berlin, brought me in to j&nd a woman, worn 
out with grief over the loss of her son and the long wait- 
ing in the queue for food, lying on the floor in a semi- 
conscious condition. It is the custom to admit five or 
six people at a time. I was at first surprised that no- 
body in the line outside had stirred at the appeal of the 
child, but I need not have expected individual initiative 
even under the most extenuating circumstances from 
people so slavishly disciplined that they would stolidly 
wait their turn. But the four women inside — why did 
they not help the woman ? The spirit of self-preserva- 
tion must be the answer. Por them the main event of 
the day was to secure the half-pound of meat which 
would last them for a week. They simply would not 



3 1 6 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

be turned from that one objective until it was reached. 
And the soldiers passing through Berlin ! I saw some 
mj last afternoon in Berlin, loaded with their kit, 
marching silently down Unter den Linden to the troop 
trains, where a few relatives would tearfully bid them 
good-bye. There was not a sound in their ranks — 
only the dull thud of their heavy marching boots. They 
didn't sing nor even speak. The passers-by buttoned 
their coats more tightly against the chill wind and 
hurried on their several ways, with never a thought or a 
look for the men in field-grey, moving, many of them 
for the last time, through the streets of the capital. 
The old man who angered the war-mad throng before 
the ScJiloss on August 1st, 1914, with his discordant 
croak of "War is a serious business, young man," lives 
in the spirit of to-day. And he did not have to go to 
the mountain ! 



CHAPTEE XXVII 

ACROSS THE NORTH SEA 

AFTER my last exit from Germany into Holland I 
was confronted by a new problem. I had found 
going to England very simple on my previous war-time 
crossings, l^ow, however, there were two obstacles in 
my path — first, to secure permission to board a vessel 
bound for England; secondly, to make the actual pas- 
sage safely. 

The passport difiiculty was the first to overcome. 
The passport with which I had come to Europe before 
the war, and which had been covered with frontier 
viseesj secret service permissions and military permis- 
sions, from the Alps to the White Sea and from the 
Thames to the Black Sea, had been cancelled in Wash- 
ington at my request during my brief visit home in the 
autumn of 1915. On my last passport I had limited 
the countries which I intended to visit to Germany 
and Austria-Hungary. I purposed adding to this list 
as I had done on my old passport, but subsequent Amer- 
ican regulations, aimed at restricting travellers to one 
set of belligerents, prevented that. 

I was not only anxious to return to London to con- 
tinue my work with Lord ]N^orthcliffe on The Times and 
the Daily Mail, but I was encouraged by two American 
officials in Germany and Austria-Hungary to write the 
truth about Germany — a feat quite impossible, as one 

317 



3 1 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

of tliem said to me, for a correspondent remaining in 
the zone of the Central Powers. The official in Austria- 
Hungary had become righteously indignant at the sneer- 
ing German remarks about how they could "play with 
Washington in the U-boat question." He asked me to 
learn all possible news of submarines. The official in 
Germany had been impressed by my investigations 
among the men behind Tirpitz, men who never for a 
moment ceased in their efforts to turn on f rightfulness 
in full force. When I mentioned the new American 
passport regulations which would delay me getting to 
England, he said : "In Holland fix it with the British. 
I hope you will do some good with all this information, 
for you have the big scoop of the day. 'Now is the 
time." 

I tried to "fix it" with the British authorities in 
Rotterdam, but as they did not know me my progress 
was slow for a few days. Then I went to Amsterdam 
to my old newspaper friend, Charles Tower, correspon- 
dent for the Daily Mail, a man of broad experience, and 
ii? close touch with affairs in Holland, a country which 
war journalists have grown to look upon as an im- 
portant link in the news chain between Germany and 
England. I realised that this move might confirm the 
suspicions of von Kiihlmann's spies who were on my 
trail. However, the free air of Holland was making 
me a little incautious, a little over-confident. 

"There is the man who is following you," said Tower, 
as we stepped in the evening from his home on to the 
brightly lighted street and made our way along the edge 
of the canals. The tall, round-shouldered German 
shadowed us through the crowded streets to the Amstel 



ACROSS THE NORTH SEA 319 

Hatel. Then we shadowed hinij while he telephoned for 
help which came in the form of a persistent Hollander, 
who insisted in sitting at the table next to us, although 
it had just been vacated by diners and needed re-arrang- 
ing, whereas many other tables were entirely free. 

That is a sample of the manner in which we were 
systematically spied upon. In order to make arrange- 
ments it was necessary for us to travel together so that 
we could talk, as our time was limited. It was abso- 
lutely impossible for us to go into a restaurant or get 
into a railway compartment without having a satellite 
at our elbow. They were very persistent and very 
thorough; but the system in Holland has the same 
glaring flaw that is common to the German system 
everywhere — too much system and not sufficient clever- 
ness in the individual. 

Von Kiihlmann, the German Minister, certainly does 
not lack men. We encountered them everywhere. Travel- 
ling first class gives one more or less privacy in Holland, 
so that it was decidedly irritating to have a listener 
make for our compartment, while adjoining first-class 
compartments were entirely empty. If the intrusion 
resulted in our going to another compartment, an ever- 
ready Kamerad would quickly join us. 

In all countries Germany considers certain telephone 
connections to be of great strategic importance. It is 
practically impossible to be connected with the British 
Consulate at Rotterdam imtil the "interpreter" is put 
on. Mr. Tower experiences the same annoyance. In- 
deed, the Germans are extremely attentive to him. 
Although he needs only a small flat, since he lives alone, 
he has to protect himself by hiring the floor above and 



320 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

the floor below, as the Germans are continually trying 
to get rooms as close to him as possible. The German 
Government has for years been pouring out money like 
water to conquer the world. If I were a German 
taxpayer I should feel much like the man who 
discovers that the Florida land which some smooth- 
talking combination travelling book-agent and real 
estate agent persuaded him to buy is several feet under 
water. 

Tower and the British authorities finally obtained 
permission for me to land in England, but they insisted 
that it would be worse than useless for me to attempt 
to go on a Dutch steamer, as I should be taken off. 
Within a week two of these steamers had been con- 
ducted by the Germans to Zeebrugge. 

After I had left word that I wished to go at the first 
possible opportunity, and had received some further 
instructions. Tower and I left for Rotterdam on our 
last train ride together in Holland. The little man 
with the book who sat beside us in the tram to the 
Central station turned us^ over to a big man with 
whitish eyebrows and reddish hair and moustache, who 
followed us into a second-class compartment, which we 
had entered purposely, although we had bought first- 
class tickets. We then pretended to discover our mis- 
take and changed to a vacant first-class compartment. 
Through some rare oversight there was no Kamerad 
on hand, whereupon the man with the reddish hair fol- 
lowed us with the pathetically feeble explanation that 
he, too, had made the same mistake. 

When Tower and I had talked ad nauseam on such 
fiercely neutral subjects as Dutch cheese and Swiss 



ACROSS THE NORTH SEA 321 

scenery, I felt an impelling desire to "get even" witK 
the intruder, and began to complain to Tower of the 
injustice of the British not allowing me to return to 
America via England, which I wished to see for a few 
days. He took the cue readily, and accused me of being 
"fed-up like all neutral correspondents in Berlin." He 
frankly expressed his disgust at the enthusiasm which 
he declared that I had been showing for everything 
German since I met him in Holland. As the train 
pulled into the Hague, where I prepared to leave him, 
he concluded by saying, "After all, you ought not to 
blame the British authorities for refusing you permis- 
sion to go to England. I have done my best and have 
failed ; there is nothing more that I can do. I did get 
one concession for you, however. You will not be 
roughly handled or otherwise maltreated when your 
vessel touches at Ealmouth." 

I had to make a serious effort to keep a straight face 
while leaving the train with this last realistic touch of 
"British brutality" ringing in my ears. Tower, I might 
add, had voiced the extraordinary myth one hears in the 
Fatherland about the terrible manner in which the 
British treat passengers on neutral steamers touching 
at their ports. 

The man with the reddish hair followed me to the 
office of the Holland- America Line, where I made appli- 
cation for a reservation on the boat which would sail in 
a week or ten days. From there I went to a small 
restaurant. He seemed satisfied and left me, where- 
upon I followed him. He hurried to the large Cafe 
Central, stepped straight to a table in the front room, 
which is level with the street, and seated himself beside 



322 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

a thin, dark German of the intellectual type who ap- 
peared to be awaiting him. From my seat in the 
shadows of the higher room I watched with amusement 
the increasingly puzzled expression on the face of the 
intellectual German while the man with the reddish 
hair unfolded his tale. When they parted my curiosity 
caused me to trail after the thin, dark man. He went 
straight to the German Legation. 

For two days I nervously paced up and down the 
sands at Scheveningen looking out upon the North Sea 
and waiting for the call. It came one short drizzly 
afternoon. The Germans, of course, knew the where- 
abouts of the vessel on which I should embark for Eng- 
land, though it is highly improbable that they knew 
the sailing time, and they did not know when I 
should go on it. 

I did everything possible to throw any possible spies 
off the trail as I made my way in the dark to a lonely 
wharf on the Maas River where I gave the password to 
a watchman who stepped out of a black corner near 
the massive gates which opened to the pier. 

I went aboard a little five hundred ton vessel with 
steam up, and stood near two other men on the narrow 
deck, where I watched in considerable awe the silent 
preparations to cast away. 

A man stepped out of the cabin. "I presume, sir, 
that you are the American journalist," he said. He 
explained that he was the steward. From the bridge 
came the voice of the captain, "We can give them only 
a few minutes more," he said. 

Two minutes of silence, broken only by the gentle 
throbbing of the engines. Then from the blackness 



ACROSS THE NORTH SEA 323 

near the street gate came the sound of hurrying feet. 
I could make out three stumbling figures, apparently 
urged along by a fourth. "Who are they?" I asked 
the steward. 

"They must be the three Tommies who escaped from 
Germany. Brave lads they are. A couple more days 
and we'll have them back in England." 

"A couple of days ?" I exclaimed. "Why, it's only 
eight hours to the Thames estuary, isn't it ?" 

"Eight hours in peace time; and eight hours for 
Dutch 'l)oats now — when the Germans don't kidnap 
them away to Zeebrugge. Eut the course to the Thames 
is not our course. The old fourteen-hour trip to Hull 
often takes us forty now. Every passage is different, 
too. It isn't only on the sea that the Germans try to 
bother us ; they also keep after us when we are in port 
here. Only yesterday the Dutch inspectors did us a 
good turn by arresting five spies monkeying around the 
boat — three Germans and two Dutchmen." 

The little vessel was headed into the stream now, 
the three Tommies had gone inside, followed a little 
later by the two men who were on the deck when I 
arrived, men who talked French. When the steward 
left I was alone on the deck. 

I watched the receding lights of Rotterdam till they 
flickered out in the distance. The night was misty and 
too dark to make out anything on shore. My thoughts 
went back to the last time, nearly a year before, when 
I had been on that river. I saw it then, in flood of 
moonlight as I stepped on the boat deck of the giant 
liner Rotterdam. The soft strains of a waltz floated up 
from the music room, adding enchantment to the wind- 



3 24 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

mills and low Dutch farmhouses strung out below the 
level of the water. 

At that time my thoughts were full of my coming 
attempt to get into Germany, a Germany which was 
smashing through Serbia, and already Jplanning the 
colossal onslaught against Verdun, the onslaught which 
she hoped would put France out of the war. I had got 
into Germany, but for a long time I had almost de- 
spaired of getting out; twice I had been turned back 
courteously but firmly from the frontiers, once when I 
tried to cross to Switzerland and again when I started 
for Denmark. A reliable friend had told me that the 
Wilhelmstrasse had suspected me but could prove 
nothing against me. The day before I felt Germany I 
was called to the Wilhelmstrasse, where I received the 
interesting and somewhat surprising information that 
the greatest good that a correspondent could do in the 
world be to use his influence to bring the United States 
and Germany to a better understanding. I made 
neither comment nor promise. I was well aware that 
the same Wilhelmstrasse, while laying the wires for an 
attempt to have my country play Germany's game, was 
sedulously continuing its propaganda of Oott sirafe 
Ameriha among the German people. As in the hatred 
sown against Great Britain hate against America was 
sown so that the Government would have a united Ger- 
many behind them in case of war. 

I was at last out of Germany, but the lights of the 
Hook of Holland reminded me that a field of German 
activity lay ahead — floating mines, torpedoes, subma- 
rines, and swift destroyers operating from Ostend and 
Zeebrugge. They are challenging British supremacy 



ACROSS THE NORTH SEA 325 

in the southerii part of the !N"orth Sea, through the 
waters of which we must now feel our way. 

We were off the Hook running straight to the open 
sea. The nervous feeling of planning and delay of 
the last few days gave way now to the exhilaration 
which comes of activity in danger. If the Germans 
should get us, the least that would happen to me would 
be internment imtil the end of the war. I was risking 
everything on the skill and pluck of the man who paced 
the bridge above my head, and on the efficiency of the 
British patrol of the seas. 

The little steamer suddenly began to plunge and roll 
with the waves washing her decks when I groped my 
way, hanging to the rail, to the snug cabin where six 
men sat about the table. The pallor of their faces made 
them appear wax-like in the yellow light of the smoking 
oil lamp which swung suspended overhead. Three of 
them were British, two were Belgian, and one was 
Erench, but there was a common bond which drew them 
together in a comradeship which transcends all barriers 
of nationality, for they had escaped from a common 
enemy. 

They welcomed me to the table. It is surprising 
what a degree of intimacy can spring up between seven 
men, all with histories behind, and all with the same 
hope of getting to England. They were only beginning 
to find themselves, they were indeed still groping to 
pick up the threads of reality of a world from which 
they had been snatched two years before. 

The Englishman at my right, a corporal, had been 
taken prisoner with a bullet in his foot at the retreat 
from Mons. In the summer of 1916 he had been sent 



326 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

to a punishment work camp near Windau in Oourland. 
I had already heard unsavoury rumours of this camp 
while I was in Germany, of men forced to toil until 
they dropped in their tracks, of an Englishman shot 
simply because his guard was in bad temper. But the 
most damning arraignment of Windau came from a 
young Saxon medical student, who told me that after 
he had qualified for a commission as second lieutenant 
he declined to accept it. This was such an unusual 
occurrence in a country where the army officer is a 
semi-deity that I was naturally curious to know 
why. 

"I am loyal to the Eatherland," the young Saxon 
said to me, "and I am not afraid to die. I was filled 
with enthusiasm to receive a commission, but all that 
enthusiasm died when I saw the way Russian prisoners 
were treated in East Prussia and at Windau. I saw 
them stripped to the waist under orders from the camp 
ofiicers, tied to trees and lashed until the blood flowed. 
When I saw one prisoner, weak from underfeeding, cut 
with switches until he died in the presence of a Berlin 
captain, muy mind was made up. My country has gone 
too far in making the army ofiicer supreme. I now 
could see the full significance of Zabern, a significance 
which I could not realise at the time. During the first 
part of the war I became angry when outsiders called us 
barbarians; now I feel sad. I do not blame them. 
But it is our system that is at fault, and we must cor- 
rect it. Therefore, although I am an insignificant indi- 
vidual and do not count, I shall, as I love my country, 
obey the dictates of my conscience. I will not be an 
oflSeer in the German system." 



ACROSS THE NORTH SEA 327 

I thought of that sincere young student while the 
boat staggered under the onslaughts of heavy seas, and 
the corporal told of how twelve hours' daily toil on the 
railway in Courland with rations entirely inadequate 
for such work, finally put him on the sick list, and he 
was sent back to Miinster in western Germany. 

He was then sent into the fields with two companions 
— the two who were in the group about the table — and 
with them he seized a favourable opportunity to escape. 
His companions had tried on previous occasions, each 
separately, but had been caught, sent back and put into 
dark cells and given only one meal a day for a long and 
weakening period. That did not daunt them. The 
Germans thought that men who had gone through that 
kind of punishment would not try to escape again. Yet 
as soon as their strength was restored through their food 
parcels from home they were off, but in an entirely 
different direction. 

I asked one of them, a little Welshman, where he got 
the waterproof rubber bag on the floor at his feet, in 
which were all his earthly belongings. "That used to be 
the old German farmer's tablecloth," he said. 

To-day in Europe 'there are millions of civilians 
dressed in military uniform, which fails to.hide the fact 
that their main work of life is not that of the soldier. 
But the three British soldiers sitting under the smoky 
brass lamp were of a different sort. Twelve years of 
service had so indelibly stamped them as soldiers of 
the King that the make-shift clothing given them in 
Holland could not conceal their calling. Their faces 
were an unnatural white from the terrible experiences 
which they had undergone, but, like the rest of the 



3 2 8 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

Old Armj, they were always soldiers, every inch of 
them. 

The two men whom I had heard talking French on 
the deck were Belgians. The one had been a soldier at 
Liege, and had managed to scramble across a ditch 
after his three days' tramp to Holland, although the 
sentry's bullet whistled uncomfortably close. He said 
that his strongest wish was to rejoin the Belgian army 
so that he might do his part to avenge the death of seven 
civilian hostages who had been shot before his eyes. 

The other Belgian was just over military age, but 
he wanted to reach England to volunteer. His nerve 
and resource are certainly all right. He knew of the 
electrified wire along the Belgian-Dutch frontier, so he 
brought two pieces of glass with him, and thus held the 
current of death away from his body while he wriggled 
through to freedom. 

We talked until after midnight. The French cap- 
tain, formerly an instructor of artillery at Saint Cyr — 
the West Point and the Sandhurst of France — taken 
prisoner in the first autumn of the war, was the last to 
tell his story. 

At Torgau, Saxony, in the heart of Germany, he 
plunged into the Elbe in the darkness of night, stemmed 
the swift waters, and on landing, half-drowned, rose 
speedily and walked fast to avoid a fatal chill. 

For twenty-nine days he struggled on towards liberty. 
]SJ"othing but the tremendous impulse of the desire for 
freedom could have carried him on his own two feet 
across Germany, without money, through countless 
closely-policed villages and great cities, in a country 
where everyone carries an identity book (with which, 



ACROSS THE NORTH SEA 329 

of course, he was unprovided), without a friend or 
accomplice at any point of the journey, with only a map 
torn from a railway time-tahle, and no other guides 
than the sun, moon, and stars and direction posts. 

I will give the rest of the man's story in his own 
words. 

"I came to the conclusion that my brain would not 
stand the captivity. I knew some of the difficulties 
before me, but I doubt whether I would have started if 
I had known them all. I lived on unthreshed wheat 
and rye, apples, blackberries, bilberries, carrots, turnips 
and even raw potatoes. I did not taste one morsel of 
cooked food or anything stronger than water till I 
arrived in Holland. I did not speak one word to any 
human being. On two occasions I marched more than 
thirty miles in the twenty-four hours. I slept always 
away from the roadside, and very often by day, and as 
far as possible from any inhabited house. I am, as 
you see, weak and thin, practically only muscle and 
bone, and during the last three days, while waiting in 
Holland for the boat, I have had to eat carefully to 
avoid the illness that would almost certainly follow 
repletion." 

After I had lain do^vn for a few hours' sleep, I 
thought, as I had often thought during the past thirty 
months, that although this is a war of machinery there 
is plenty of the human element in it, too. People who 
tell only of the grim-drab aspect of the great struggle 
sometimes forget that romances just as fine as were ever 
spun by Victor Hugo happen around them every day. 

At dawn I hung to the rail of the wildly tossing ship, 
looking at the horizon from which the mists were 



330 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

clearing. Two specks began to grow into the long low 
black lines of destroyers. Our most anxious moment 
of the voyage had come. We waited for the shot that 
would show them to be German. 

"They're all right. They're the escort !" came a voice 
on the winds that swept over the bridge. 

They grew rapidly large, lashed the sea white as 
they tore along one on each side of us, diving through 
the waves when they could not ride them. When 
abreast of us they seemed almost to stop in their own 
length, wheel and disappear in the distance. Somehow 
the way they wheeled reminded me of the way the Cos' 
sacks used to pull their horses sharply at right angles 
when I saw them covering the rearguard in the retreat 
through the Bul^vina. 

The rough soldier at my side looked after them, with 
a mist in his eyes that did not come from the sea. "I'll 
be able to see my wife again," he said, more to the waves 
than to me. "I didn't write, because I didn't want to 
raise any false hopes. But this settles it, we're certain 
to get home safe now. I suppose I'll walk in and find 
her packing my food parcel for Germany — the parcel 
that kept me alive, while some of them poor Eussian 
chaps with nobody to send them parcels are going under 
every day." 

We ran close to two masts sticking up out of the 
water near the mouth of the Humber, the mast of our 
sister ship, which had gone down with all on board 
when she struck a mine. 

That is the sort of sight which makes some critics 
say, '^hat is the matter with the British ISFavy?" 
Those critics forget to praise the mine-sweepers that 



ACROSS THE NORTH SEA 33 1 

we saw all about, whose bravery, endurance and noble 
spirit of self-sacrifice lead them to persevere in their 
perilous work and enable a thousand ships to reach port 
to one that goes down. 

On that rough voyage across the l^orth Sea, through 
the destroyer and armed motor launch patrol, main- 
tained by men who work unflinchingly in the shadow of 
death, I felt once again the power of the British Navy. 
I cast my lot "vyith that 'Navj when I left Holland. I 
know what its protection means, for I could not have 
crossed on a neutral Dutch vessel. 

It is all very well to complain about a few raiders 
that manage in thirty months to pierce the British 
patrols, or the hurried dash of swift destroyers into the 
Channel, but when you look from the white chalk cliffs 
of the Kentish coast at hundreds of vessels passing 
safely off the Downs, when you sail the Atlantic and 
the Mediterranean and see only neutral and Allied 
ships carrying on commerce, when you cross the Rhine 
and stand in food lines hour after hour and day after 
day, where men and women who gloried in war now 
whine at the hardships it brings, when you see a mighty 
nation disintegrating in the shadow of starvation, and 
then pass to another nation, which, though far less self- 
sustaining in food, has plenty to eat, you simply have 
to realise that there are silent victories which are often 
farther reaching than victories of eclat. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

4 THE LITTLE SHIPS 

I HAVE been particularly impressed with two miscon- 
ceptions which have existed, and to some extent 
still exist, not only in Germany but in neutral countries. 
The first is that England lacks virility, is degenerate, 
has had her day of greatness; the second, that in the 
present war she is continuing what is alleged to have 
been her policy in the past, namely, pulling the strings 
and reaping the benefit while other nations do the fight- 
ing. Through personal investigation I find these con- 
tentions so thoroughly refuted that to develop the point 
would be to commence another book instead of finishing 
this one. 

As I write I can look from my desk in the Alexandra 
Hotel, Bridlington, on to the ^N'orth Sea where it 
washes the "Frightfulness Coast," for Bridlington lies 
between Hull and Scarborough. 

I see trawlers fishing and mine-sweeping whenever 
I raise my eyes from my writing. Their crews know 
that they work in the shadow of death in what they 
describe in the dock-side taverns as the greatest sport 
in the world. Praise of the big ships often causes us 
to forget the little ships. I admire the one and rev- 
erence the other. Eor if the men on the humbler craft 
could be intimidated, the doctrine of Erightfulness 
would be justified by victory. 

22,^ 



THE LITTLE SHIPS 333 

Intimidation is a favourite weapon of the people 
across the Rhine. I was among them when their air- 
men dropped bombs on Paris early in the war. "It is 
really humane," they said, "for it will frighten the 
civilian population into imploring the military to yield 
to us to save them." They thought the same of Zep- 
pelin raids over England. Intimidation was their guid- 
ing star in Belgium. The first I heard of the massacre 
of Louvain was from one of its perpetrators. 

Intimidation was again their weapon in the case of 
Captain Fryatt. "We planned it well," snarled a mem- 
ber of the Reichstag, incensed over my expression of 
disapproval. "Before we sent our ships to intercept 
the Brussels we determined to capture him, try him 
quickly and execute him. Since our submarines will 
win the war we must protect them by all passible means. 
You see, when the next British captain thinks of ram- 
ming one of our submarines he will remember the fate 
of Captain Fryatt and think twice !" 

Once more Germany is attempting intimidation, and 
seeking to make neutrals her ally in an attempt to 
starve Britain into defeat. The American Ambassador 
is leaving Berlin, hundreds of neutral vessels hug 
havens of safety all over the world, but the women in 
Grimsby and Hull still wave farewell to the little 
trawlers that slip down the Humber to grapple with 
death. Freighters, mine-sweepers, trawlers, and the 
rest of the unsung toilers of the sea continue their 
silent, all-important task. They know that for them 
Germany has declared the law off, that they will be 
slaughtered at sight. They know also that despite the 
Grand Fleet and the armies in France, the Allies and 



334 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

their cause will go down in complete defeat if Germany 
succeeds in blocking the routes of commerce. The in- 
surmountable obstacle in her path is the simple, old- 
fashioned dogged courage of the average British seaman. 
' The Germans have developed to an astounding degree 
the quality of incorrectly diagnosing other peoples, due 
partly to the unbounded conceit engendered by their 
three wars of unification and their rapid increase of 
prosperity. Their mental food in recent years has been 
war, conquest, disparagement of others and glorification 
of self. They entered the struggle thinking only in 
army corps and siege artillery. Certain undefinable 
moral qualities, such as the last-ditch spirit of the old 
British Army on the Yser, did not come within their 
scope of reckoning. 

British illusions of the early part of the war are 
gone. The average Briton fully appreciates Germany's 
gigantic strength, and he coldly realises that as condi- 
tions are at present, his country must supply most of 
the driving force — men, guns, and shells — ^to break it. 
He thinks of the awful cost in life, and the thought 
makes him serious, but he is ready for any sacrifice. 
He welcomes help from Allies and neutrals, but 
whether the help be great or small, he is willing and re- 
solved to stand on his own feet, and carry on to the end. 
It is this spirit which makes Britain magnificent to-day. 

When losses are brought home to the Germans they 
generally give vent to their feelings by hurling maledic- 
tions upon their enemies. The Briton, under similar 
circumstances, is usually remarkably quiet, but, unlike 
the German, he is individually more determined, in 
consequence of the loss, to see the thing through. Some- 



THE LITTLE SHIPS 335 

how the German always made me feel that his war 
determination had been organised for him. 

Organisation is the glory and the curse of Germany. 
The Germans are by nature and training easily influ- 
enced, and as a mass they can be led as readily in the 
. right path as in the wrong. Common-sense administra- 
tion and co-operation have made their cities places of 
beauty, health, comfort and pleasure. But when you 
stop for a moment in your admiration of the streets, 
buildings, statues, bridges, in such a city as Munich 
and enter a crowded hall to sit among people who listen 
with attention, obedience and delight to a professor 
venomously instructing them in their duty of "hating 
with the whole heart and the whole mind," and convinc- 
ing them that "only through hate can the greatest 
obstacles be overcome," you begin to suspect that some- 
thing is wrong. 

It is part of the Prussian nature to push everything 
to extremes, a trait which has advantages and disad- 
vantages. It has resulted in brilliant achievements in 
chemical and physical laboratories, and in gout, dyspep- 
sia and flabbiness in eating establishments. A virtue 
carried too far becomes a vice. In Germany patriotism 
becomes jingoistic hatred and contempt for others, or- 
ganisation becomes the utilisation of servility, obedi- 
ence becomes willingness to do wrong at command. 

Americans and British are inclined to ascribe to the 
Germans their own qualities. In nothing is this more 
obvious than in the English idea that the fair treatment 
of Germans in England will beget fair treatment of the 
English in Germany. The Prussians, who have many 
Oriental characteristics — and some of them, a good deal 



336 THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW 

of Oriental appearance — think orientally and attribute 
fair, or what we call sportsmanlike, treatment to fright 
and a desire to curry favour. 

When Maubeuge fell I heard Germans of all classes 
boast of how their soldiers struck the British who 
offered to shake hands after they surrendered to the 
Germans, l^early two years later, during the Battle of 
the Somme, some Berlin papers copied from London 
papers a report of how British soldiers presented arms 
to the group of prisoners who had stubbornly defended 
Ovillers. I called the attention of several German 
acquaintances to this as an evidence of Anglo-Saxon 
sporting spirit, but I got practically the same response 
in every case. "Yes, they are beginning at last to see 
what we can do !" was the angry remark. 

The Germans have become more and more "Prus- 
sianised" in recent years. State worship had advanced 
so far that the German people entered the conflict in the 
perverted belief that the German Government had used 
every means to avert war. It is a mistake, however, to 
suppose that the German people entered the war reluc- 
tantly. They did not. There was perfect unity in the 
joyful thought of German invincibility, easy and com- 
plete victory, plenty of plunder, and such huge indem- 
nities that the growing burden of taxation would be 
thrown off their shoulders. 

A country where the innocent children are scientifi- 
cally inoculated with the virus of hate, where force, and 
only force, is held to be the determinant internationally 
of mine and thine, where the morals of the farmyard 
are preached from the professorial chair in order to 
manufacture human cogs for the machine of militarism. 



THE LITTLE SHIPS 337 

is an undesirable and a dangerous neighbour and will 
continue so until it accepts other standards. A victori- 
ous Germany would not accept other standards. 

That is why I look on the little ships with so much 
admiration this morning. They sail between Germany 
and victory, for if they could be intimidated Britain 
would be starved out. Then the gospel that "only 
through hate can the greatest obstacles be overcome," 
would be the corner-stone of the most powerful Empire 
of history. 



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